There is a global reliance on institutional care for children in both child protection and children in conflict with the law. Knowing that it is a necessary process, how do we engage key stakeholders in the strategic change? In India, while latest legislation, the Juvenile Justice Act 2015 is suppor...

Deinstitutionalization in Bulgaria is a sustainable governmental policy since 2010 with the adoption of a strategic document, which explicitly states the will of the Bulgarian government to transform the institutional care for children into a public care. Over the last seven years foster care in Bu...

Resilience is often looked at as a fixed trait. As a "thing" you either have or don’t have. But the literature often contradicts this stance; instead showing resilience as a process that includes a delicate balance of protective and risk factors. One of the main protective factors associated with ...

There are currently over 6,000 children in alternative care in Ireland and over 90% of these are living with foster carers (Tusla, 2016). Many of these have experienced multiple placements which can result in a change of school, neighbourhood and family environment. There is a paucity of child-centr...

In 2009, the UN General Assembly welcomed the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (A/RES/64/142). The Guidelines provide authoritative guidance on the implementation of the provisions of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other international standards relevant to children’s ...

The Aboriginal Therapeutic Home Based Care (ATHBC) program is an innovative model in Victoria, to support enhancing the capacity of Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisation (ACCO) foster/kinship staff and carers to provide a trauma-informed therapeutic response to children in out of home care....

“Towards the Right Care for Children” is the synthesis report of a vast review of alternative care on three continents – Africa, Asia and Latin America – and in six country case-studies – Chile, Ecuador, Indonesia, Nepal, Nigeria and Uganda. The European Commission contracted the study fro...

Take Two Berry Street is an intensive therapeutic service in Victoria, Australia for infants, children and adolescents who have experienced abuse and neglect. A significant proportion of the children are in out of home care which includes foster care, residential and kinship care. The Take Two progr...

Australia is ahead of most countries in the world in the deinstitutionalisation of protective child care, having closed all its institutions and dramatically reduced the availability of small group residential care. That Australia’s children are now almost exclusively in kinship care and foster ca...

Children and young people in Out of Home Care placements experience multiple layers of trauma, and their minds and bodies are adept at developing coping skills which enable survival. These adaptive skills often present as problematic or difficult behaviours, and may have a negative impact upon place...

Foster care is a complex and temporary process, characterized by separation of children/parents as well as continuation of their affective bonds; by the need to preserve as well as to transform relationships. In this process many actors (children, social workers, birthparents, foster families, socia...

Research into the levels of participation in child protection, where the child is living at home with their parents, is rare (Cossar, Brandon et al. 2016). Whilst participation and collaboration with Children in Care Councils or school councils is routinely celebrated there remains much secrecy arou...

We do not have much knowledge about the foster families own children. We have started a researc over tree years where we interview the children and the foster parents about how the placement is for the whole family. We want to share some of our knew knowledge with you.

In this plenary the focus would be data collected about the children who were removed from parental care in 2012 in Malta, and others who were considered for removal from parental care during the same period, but who for some reason were not removed. This data about the 49 children will throw light ...

The Adoption and Children (Scotland) Act 2007 came into force in 2009 and introduced the new Permanence Orders. A Permanence Order (PO) allows parental responsibilities and parental rights relating to residence and guidance to pass to the local authority and allow other parental responsibilities and...

The effects of trauma on a child severely compound the ability to self-regulate and sustain healthy relationships. In the classroom, the effects of trauma may manifest as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder, oppositional defiance disorder, reactive attachment, disinhibited soc...

            Analyses of used mechanisms and tools of evaluation effectiveness and quality of social services, projects’ effectiveness on prevention and family placement, experience of evaluation with child’s participation. As the result – decisions made on national and regional leve...

Mandatory reporting is the concept whereby particular individuals, often professionals in contact with children, are obliged by law to report knowledge or strong suspicions of situations of child abuse or neglect. Literature, academia and most of the experienced professionals are in agreement with m...

Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer/questioning, and two-spirit (LGBTQ2S) youth are often over-represented in foster care systems, and frequently face discrimination both inside and outside of the child welfare system. Recently there has been growing acknowledgement that providing safe, stabl...

A significant number of looked after children (LAC) are a result of abuse and neglect, thus at higher risk of unmet physical, emotional and mental health needs.  In Malta, although a number of children going into care are assessed by a community paediatrician, there currently is no standardised spe...