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NEWS, EVENTS, RESEARCH, AND OTHER RESOURCES ON CARE
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"
I think the environmental circumstances are the deciding factor. If a young person has got no sort of prospects, if they are not being paid attention to, if they are not being treated like children they are being treated like animals then they are going to behave like animals. It’s that simple. And, care homes treat children like animals.”
- Eddie, a young person in residential care, from
This is Our Story
“It was basically just anger like I was really angry and I was screaming and I was shouting. Okay, they probably did think I was being aggressive. But did that actually injure anybody? Did I actually break anything of value? No … They couldn’t handle the way I was feeling, they just called the police."
- Jodie, a young person in residential care, from
This is Our Story
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Are you a practitioner working with children and families? We'd love to hear from you! Are you a program manager or someone who supervises frontline workers? We'd love your help in encouraging the practitioners you work with to give us their feedback! Please help us by answering the questions in this
10-20 minute survey,
and disseminating the survey widely, so that we can learn more about the needs of practitioners
.
BCN is trying to find out more about how practitioners and local frontline workers access and use information on a day-to-day basis, and how they build expertise and skills, in order to better support them in their work. In particular, we are interested in whether and how online access to information can help with this.
Those willing to assist by surveying practitioners in their networks or conducting in-person focus groups, and those interested in learning more, please email
[email protected]
.
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With the aim of improving provision of suitable care and the manner in which it is offered, the Caring for Children Moving Alone MOOC Taskforce (including BCN) has created a specialized Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). This MOOC aims to increase the knowledge and support improved practice of front line workers and others who make decisions about the care and best interest of children on the move every day.
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Focus on Alternative Care and Criminalization
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In this focus section of the newsletter, we highlight recent research regarding the criminalization of children and young people with experience of alternative care. The literature featured here indicates that children in out-of-home care in many countries have higher rates of criminal justice involvement
, either while in care or after they have left care, than do their peers. For example, in the UK, looked after children (who have been looked after for at least 12 months) are five times more likely to offend than all children, according to the Department for Education.
Furthermore, several studies listed below have found that children in more restrictive care settings, such as residential care, have higher rates of criminalization than children in less restrictive types of care such as kinship or foster care.
While the resources in this focus section describe research conducted only in high-income countries, primarily in Northern Europe, North America, and Australia, the findings are nonetheless relevant to other contexts as they point to the ways in which placement in alternative care can be associated with a higher likelihood of involvement in the criminal justice system and the impacts of different children's care settings on longer-term outcomes such as criminalization.
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This guidance from the
UK
's Department for Education presents a framework to help social care and criminal justice agencies keep looked-after children out of the criminal justice system.
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This report presents the findings arising from a small-scale exploratory study commissioned by
Irish
Penal Reform Trust (IPRT) that aimed to explore the extent to which children with care experience are over-represented in the Irish youth justice system.
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In this study from the
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology
, the authors interviewed 46 professionals who had contact with young people in residential care settings in New South Wales,
Australia
about their perceptions of the link between residential care and contact with the criminal justice system.
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This paper from the
Children and Youth Services Review
discusses the struggles of young women who are “crossover youth” in the
US
. Crossover youth are children who are simultaneously involved in the foster care and juvenile justice systems.
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This is the first in a series of briefings
from the Howard League for Penal Reform
published alongside a programme of research and campaign work to end the criminalisation of children living in residential care. The project builds on from research published in March 2016, which found that children living in children’s homes in the
UK
were being criminalised at much higher rates than other children, including those in other types of care.
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This is the second briefing paper published as part of the Howard League’s two-year programme to end the criminalisation of children in residential care in the
UK
. It explores how good practice in the policing of children’s homes can significantly reduce the unnecessary criminalisation of vulnerable children and demand on police resources.
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This briefing paper is part of a series from the Howard League that explores some core principles to help protect children in residential care in the
UK
from criminalisation.
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This briefing, part of a series from the Howard League, tells the anonymised stories of four children and young people in the
UK
who have been criminalised in residential care, in their own words.
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Dually-involved youth represent a population of youth who receive some level of supervision from both the child welfare and juvenile justice systems concurrently. The current study from the
Children and Youth Services Review
examined education-related risk factors, recidivism, referrals for services, and service access among dually-involved youth in Los Angeles County,
US
.
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This article from the
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Criminology
describes the findings of a four-year study with a cohort of children in out-of-home care in New South Wales,
Australia
and their experiences with the criminal justice system.
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This study from the
Children and Youth Services Review
documents the rates at which children involved with foster care [in the
United States
] enter the juvenile justice system (crossover or dually involved), and the factors associated with this risk.
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This PhD thesis focuses on the perceptions of children in care whilst they are still in care and subject to youth justice supervision. The findings are based on semi-structured interviews with 19 children in care attending various Youth Offending Teams in the North West of
England
.
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This study from the
Children and Youth Services Review
sought to distinguish youth in the
US
child welfare system who became involved with the justice system from youth who did not become involved with the justice system based on the youth's protective factors and their caregivers' parenting skills.
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This article from the
Scottish
Journal of Residential Child Care
highlights a range of factors which can support good quality, consistent and confident decision making, towards the aim of ensuring that care leavers' contact with police is avoided unless absolutely necessary.
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This report from the Immigrant Legal Resource Center of the United States highlights the connections between
US
immigration policy and the child welfare system, particularly the criminalization of undocumented immigrants and its impact on foster care in the US.
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This brief from the Urban Institute summarizes insights drawn from Community of Practice conversations and provides recommendations for local governments, service providers, and other partners considering Pay for success (PFS) as a tool for financing interventions serving transitional youth in the
US
, who experience more interactions than average with the criminal justice system, among other issues. In this brief, the term “transitional youth” refers to youth who have been involved with foster care and who might also be involved in the juvenile justice system through probation or detention.
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To inform decisions about permanent care arrangements, the authors of this study from
Developmental Child Welfare
used
Swedish
national population registers to create a sibling population consisting of 194 children born 1973–1982 who had been in out-of-home care (OHC) at least 5 years before adolescence but were never adopted (50% boys) and their 177 maternal birth siblings who also had been in OHC at least 5 years before their teens but were adopted before adolescence (52.5% boys). Results showed that adopted siblings tended to have considerably better outcomes in a range of outcomes, including criminality.
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The present systematic review from the
Children and Youth Services Review
examines the current literature on the association between out-of-home placement and offending behavior among youth with Child Protection Services maltreatment reports in the
US
.
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Using a bevy of administrative data, this article from the
Children and Youth Services Review
investigates potential risk and protective factors of youth (n = 1420) who aged out of foster care without legal permanency in a southwestern state of the
US
.
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This study from the
International Journal of Population Data Science
linked Child and Family Services (CFS), Justice, and Population Health Registry data to quantify the overlap between having a history of CFS during childhood (0-17 years) and being charged with a crime as a youth (12-17 years) for young people in Manitoba,
Canada
.
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This study from the
Lancet
aimed to compare the rates of psychiatric diagnoses and criminal convictions in young adulthood (ages 18–25 years) among children who were first placed in care in
Finland
at ages 2–6 years with those of children who were not placed in care and who had similar sociodemographic and family characteristics.
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This article from the
Howard Journal of Crime and Justice
presents qualitative data from interviews with 46 welfare and justice professionals to examine the criminalisation of children who go missing within the Out‐Of‐Home‐Care (OOHC) residential environment in
Australia
.
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The objective of this study from BMJ Open was to investigate whether men and women in the
UK
who were looked-after (in public care) or adopted as children are at increased risk of adverse psychological and social outcomes, including criminal convictions, in adulthood.
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Understanding the Situation
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This 4th annual report from the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance includes a multi-country, four region review of the state of the social service workforce. Through Alliance-led mappings and assessments in three regions in collaboration with UNICEF, and information from mappings and assessments in a fourth region, this report consolidates trends and data and makes recommendations for better planning, development and support to this frontline workforce.
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This paper from
Dignity: A Journal on Sexual Exploitation and Violence
examines the development and proliferation of baby-selling centers in southern
Nigeria
and its impacts on and implication for women in Nigeria. It demonstrates how an attempt to give protection to unwed pregnant girls has metamorphosed into “baby harvesting” and selling through the notorious “baby factories,” where young women are held captive and used like industrial machines for baby production.
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This paper from the Australian Institute of Criminology summarises the processes by which children become vulnerable to sexual exploitation and related harms within or facilitated by orphanages in
Southeast Asia
.
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This study from
Migration Letters
highlights the plight of children in state orphanages in
Bosnia
during conditions of war and its aftermath, in order to explore how state narratives trap children between contested notions of the best interests of the child, national belonging, and familial rights.
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In this data snapshot, the Annie E. Casey Foundation examines how placements for young people in foster care in the
US
have changed from 2007 to 2017.
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In this paper from
Fiat Iustitia
, the authors analyze the national regulatory framework of the
Republic of Moldova
in light of its compliance with the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in the context of commitments made in support of young people who leave the alternative care on the grounds of age.
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This study from the
Children and Youth Services Review
reports on a qualitative investigation involving 15 young kinship care alumni in
Ghana
to explore what kinship caregivers' unpreparedness means and what causes them to be unprepared.
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Policies, Standards, and Guidelines
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This tool provides practical suggestions and guidance to support professionals working in family court in
Ireland
in communicating with children in court. The tool includes guidance on how to question children and how to ensure they are involved in decision-making and that their voices are heard.
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This guide from the Christian Alliance for Orphans (CAFO) outlines the five steps to help transition an organization's donors to improve fundraising outcomes and create the financial capacity to provide better care for vulnerable children and families, based on CAFO's research on
how OVC-serving organizations inspired donors to give toward a new model of family-based care.
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These guidelines, produced by UNICEF and the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance are informed by evidence of ‘what works’ and lessons learned in the field. They are designed to accelerate UNICEF regional and country offices’ programming on social service workforce strengthening, and support work to better plan, develop and support the social services workforce with national and regional partners.
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Catalyzing Business Skills is a suite of three financial literacy and business skills curricula developed by Making Cents International and Child Fund's Economic Strengthening to Keep and Reintegrate Children into Families (ESFAM) project in
Uganda
. They are accompanied by a follow-on coaching guide for parasocial workers to use with caregivers or children and youth at home.
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As technology enhancements effectively augment family-based interventions, the purpose of this study from the Children and Youth Services Review was to pilot a smartphone application (app) in the context of a trauma and behavior management-informed training for foster and kinship caregivers in the
US
.
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This research from the
Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal
investigated the psychosocial-support provision for learners from child-headed households (CHHs) in five public high schools in
South Africa
. The results of this study highlight the importance of implementing trauma-informed approach in supporting learners from CHHs.
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This paper presents an overview of ChildHub, a peer learning and capacity-building network for child protection professionals initially developed and deployed in
South-East Europe
, and outlines a proposal for contextualizing ChildHub to
Africa
and
South Asia
.
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This paper from the journal of
Global Social Welfare
describes the development of an evidence-informed family therapy intervention designed for lay counselor delivery in low-resource settings and presents findings on the feasibility and acceptability of implementation in
Kenya
.
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11 March - 5 April 2019, with a particular focus on sections addressing children's care.
Click below to read the Country Care Reviews for the following countries:
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This video provides a short summary of the INSPIRE objectives and goals, strategies, measures to be implemented, and good practices to develop across the globe.
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With efforts underway at the international level to reconcile different approaches to the right of the child to grow up in a family – in the CRPD, CRC and the UN Guidelines – this webinar, hosted by the European Network on Independent Living & Disability Rights International, addressed some of the following questions: how to ensure every child can grow up in a family, is residential care justified in any circumstance, how to ensure that children growing up in group homes and other residential care settings are given an opportunity to access family-based care, and the right to independent living.
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This video presents the full recording of the 6th Annual Global Social Service Workforce Symposium held 7 May 2019, including keynote address, panel discussions, and Q&As. The Symposium provided a forum for practitioners, government representatives, scholars and other experts from around the world to discuss efforts to strengthen the social service workforce.
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The Guardian, 27 April 2019
PM News Nigeria, 25 April 2019
Tiny Spark, 23 April 2019
Times of India, 19 April 2019
UNICEF, 17 April 2019
Spiegel Online, 16 April 2019
The Nation, 16 April 2019
CBS News, 15 April 2019
BBC News, 12 April 2019
New Vision, 11 April 2019
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Al Jazeera, 11 April 2019
Indian Country Today, 8 April 2019
The Irish Times, 8 April 2019
BBC News, 7 April 2019
The New York Times, 6 April 2019
Independent, 5 April 2019
BBC News, 4 April 2019
New York Times, 3 April 2019
Daily Nation, 1 April 2019
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8-10 May 2019
Louisville, Kentucky, USA
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2 July 2019
Durban, South Africa
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Newsletter participants, currently 4,250 in total, work on issues related to the care and support of vulnerable children across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas. The purpose of the newsletter is to enable members to exchange information on matters of mutual concern. If you would like to share a document, raise a specific issue, request a newsletter subscription, or reach out in any other way to the Network, please send the information to us at
[email protected]
or visit our website at
www.bettercarenetwork.org.
Thank you!
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Better Care Network | 601 West 26th Street Suite 325-19, New York, NY 10001 - USA
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