This edition of Insights produced by UNICEF summarizes the findings and recommendations of studies on the impact and outreach of social protection systems in Albania, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine where high rates of child placement in formal care still persist. The research offers important insight into the weaknesses and challenges faced by social protection systems in the region, but also point to ways in which policy-makers might maximise the impact of social protection systems in order to ‘keep families together’.

This guidance note is part of the Handbook for the Protection of Internally Displaced Persons launched by the Global Protection Cluster in Geneva in June 2010. The target audience is staff of humanitarian, human rights and development agencies working in IDP operations in the field.

This report looks at children who enter institutional care because of being without parental care, children with disabilities, child victims of abuse and children in conflict with the law. The aim is to identify key routes through the systems in order to understand the nature of the difficulties that lead children to be placed in institutions and thereby to be able to identify alternative strategies that will better support families and children.

The purpose of this study is to provide an overview of best practices in inclusive education, inform stakeholders of the current status of inclusive education in the region, describe the contextual factors which affect program implementation, and make recommendations of practical start-up steps for inclusive education programs.

This document outlines EveryChild’s approach to the growing problem of children without parental care by defining key concepts, analysing the nature and extent of the problem, exploring factors which place children at risk of losing parental care, and examining the impact of a loss of parental care on children’s rights.

In this meta-analysis of 75 studies on more than 3,888 children in 19 different countries, the intellectual development of children living in children's homes (orphanages) was compared with that of children living with their (foster) families.

This report written for UNICEF identifies the key elements for a strategy to take forward the Government of Ukraine’s programme for the reform of child welfare.

Examines the institutional challenges in implementing national social protection programmes

Assessment of the care system, domestic adoption, and international adoption in Ukraine with a summary of key findings and recommendations.

This analysis compares historic and current trends in Ukrainian orphanages with changes that led to the general demise of the American institutionalized child welfare system.