Alternative care

Be the Change! Leave No Care Leaver Behind!

Through two projects designed by SOS Children's Villages, findings show that care leavers experience a range of emotions when leaving their place of care: a mix of happiness and expectations of freedom and independence along with feelings of loneliness, anxiety and, sometimes, fear.

Family Strengthening: A collection of best practices from Eastern Europe

This report is a compilation of assessments on best practices in family strengthening in middle-income countries in order to provide policy-makers, service providing organizations and child protection and child rights practitioners with a tool for program implementation.

Guidelines on Assessing the Best Interests of the Child

One of UNHCR’s key priorities is to protect and promote the rights of all children falling under its mandate. In order to achieve this, UNHCR and its partners must support the strengthening or establishment of comprehensive child protection systems. A best interests determination (BID) describes...

Community-based Child Protection in Humanitarian Action: Definitions and terminology

This resource provides a list of common Community Based Child Protection (CBCP) related terms and their definitions and is intended to show the evolving definitions around CBCP.

Replicable Models for Transition to Family-based Care

Learn from case studies from six organizations serving orphans and vulnerable children that transitioned their programs to family-based care.

A Goal Within Reach: Ending the institutionalization of children to ensure no one is left behind

Children and young people who, for various reasons, live without the care of their parents or those who are at risk of losing it are the most exposed to poverty, discrimination, and exclusion – factors that, in turn, can make them more vulnerable to abuse, exploitation, and abandonment. The...

Good Professional Practices for Promoting Positive Parenting and Child Participation in the Reunification Processes

This study was conducted with 106 professionals who work in the child protection system in Spain. The results show a high degree of consensus among professionals regarding the following practices: (a) incorporating positive parenting into family reunification processes; (b) training the biological...

Children’s Voices: Children’s experiences of instability in the care system

Interviews with children are supplemented with data regarding instability in the care system. Children describe how changing social workers increases unsettling and upsetting experiences when they move and change schools. Building long-lasting and stable relationships with social workers improves...

The Overlap Between the Child Welfare and Youth Justice Systems in Manitoba, Canada

Manitoba has one of the highest rates of children taken into care of child welfare services in the world, and also one of the highest youth incarceration rates in Canada. Policy-makers recognize there is overlap between these systems. This article aims to investigate some of those reasons, and also...

Mind the Gap: Factors that can support responses to offending in residential child care and the challenges of implementation

There has been longstanding concern about the overrepresentation of care leavers in the criminal justice system and the fact that the behaviours of care experienced children are more likely to come to the attention of the police and to attract a criminalising response.

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