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'We are seeing increased levels of violence and exploitation against children in our community that includes physical violence, child labour and child marriage. Growing numbers of children are working, carrying heavy goods, selling fruit in traditional markets, becoming driver assistants and resorting to begging. This is due to many parents losing their livelihood and increased stress at home, due to COVID-19. This must stop because children are the future. We want to feel safe, cared for and protected. Our voices matter and we need to be heard.'
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Announcing a New Global Collaborative Platform
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Building on efforts advocating for the 2019 UNGA Resolution on the Rights of the Child and the Key Recommendations, and clear interest expressed by a broad group of actors to strengthen sectoral cooperation and collaboration, we are pleased to announce the establishment of a new Global Collaborative Platform on Transforming Children’s Care.
The overall vision for this new collaborative platform is to establish more strategic sector-wide collaboration spanning the global to the local level and inclusive of a wider range of stakeholders. It aims to enable organisations engaged in child protection and care reforms to agree on common principles and approaches, leverage and build on one another’s work, secure greater and more sustainable impact, contribute to a shared learning agenda and undertake joint advocacy.
Much about the platform and how it is going to operate, what it will do and how it will work is to be determined and shaped over the coming months through stakeholder engagement and ideas. In order to enable this process and the formation of this platform, Better Care Network has received support from USAID, the UBS Optimus Foundation and Changing the Way We Care.
One of the key principles we have committed to in this process is to ensure that the global collaborative platform is open to all actors involved in children’s care, with active participation of self-advocates (care leavers, parent advocates); disability organizations; faith-based organizations; local organizations/CBOs and other relevant communities and sectors.
There are a number of exciting opportunities for your organisation to immediately get involved in shaping the collaborative platform throughout the development phase. As with all new initiatives, it’s a bit of a ‘chicken and an egg’ situation!
Please use this form to join the Transforming Children’s Care Global Collaborative Platform and register interest in participating in specific working groups.
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The Better Care Network will continue to share tools, guidance, information, and other resources regarding children's care and protection during the COVID-19 pandemic as practitioners, policymakers, and other key stakeholders work to respond to the needs of children and families impacted by this crisis. For more resources on COVID-19 and children's care, visit the growing collection of documents in the
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How is it best for adult-led organizations to reach out to children? Who should do so, and how can they do so safely? This guide - developed by the Child Protection Area of Responsibility, CPC Learning Network, International Institute for Child Rights and Development, IFRC and UNICEF - provides some guidance on those questions and links to additional resources. The 5-module guide also includes examples of child-led and child-centric initiatives that have emerged as the COVID-19 pandemic has spread around the world.
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This podcast episode from the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action discusses the question: do child protection professionals have what they need to support and protect children as the coronavirus makes a comeback?
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In this podcast series, Family for Every Child's CEO, Amanda Griffith, holds conversations with Members of the Family for Every Child Alliance to explore the topic of Care during COVID-19. The impact of COVID-19 has been huge, both on vulnerable children and families across the world and on the local civil society organisations (CSOs) who are supporting them. These conversations explore both the challenges they face and their many innovative solutions.
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This Child Protection learning brief, the second in a series, has been prepared for UNICEF country offices and practitioners as they respond to mental health and psychosocial impact during the pandemic.
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This global report from World Vision is a consolidation of six regional reports based on consultations conducted between April and August 2020 that used a qualitative approach. The report is organised around the three themes emerging from the data: (1) the impacts of COVID-19 on children and young people; (2) their resilient responses to these impacts personally, in their families and communities; and (3) the support that children and young people need to be safe, healthy and help to fight the further spread of the virus.
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This paper from the journal of Child Abuse & Neglect aims to suggest a framework for risk and protective factors that need to be considered in child protection in its various domains of research, policy, and practice during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The overarching purpose of this exploratory study from the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal was to understand how U.S. foster parents’ parenting-related stress levels have changed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, including the role of sociodemographic characteristics in exacerbating risk for increased stress.
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This study from Save the Children focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic affects children aged 11-17 in India, including impacts on violence against children and social protection for children.
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In June 2020, the Child Protection section of UNICEF’s Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia (ECARO) conducted a survey across every country in the Region to find out how governments and partners have been using digital technology to respond to child protection issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey aimed to enhance understanding of the use of digital platforms for child protection. This report presents the findings from that survey.
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This paper from The Alliance for Children Protection in Humanitarian Action, UNICEF, and Save the Children presents evidence of how social protection approaches can contribute to child protection outcomes, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, and outlines recommendations which call for strong mobilization and uptake by governments, UN and multilateral development agencies, regional bodies, donors, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).
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Understanding the Situation |
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This report analyzes the results of the opinion study on knowledge, attitudes and practices on family separation, residential care and alternative family care for children and adolescents in Guatemala, conducted by Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC) to identify opportunities for and threats to paradigm shifts regarding the transition from residential care to alternative family-based care and to diagnose the target groups’ perceptions.
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This report presents the findings of the 2019-2020 assessment conducted within the Pilot assessment of residential healthcare facilities for children and development of recommendations for reform in five baby homes of Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava and Kherson regions of Ukraine. In addition to the findings from the assessment of baby homes, the report presents results from the region assessments regarding needs in the medical rehabilitation, paediatric palliative care, and social services for children aged 0-6 years and their families.
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This report is one of the first outputs from a project based in the Scottish Centre for Administrative Data Research (SCADR) that uses linked data from the Looked after Children in Scotland data (LACS) to examine looked after children’s journeys. The report describes the patterns of care for infants who first became looked after in Scotland when under 1 year of age between 1st April 2008 and 31st July 2017.
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This report from End Youth Homelessness Cymru is based on the voices and experiences of care experienced young people who have been, or are currently, homeless across Wales. The aim of this research is to amplify these young people’s voices to highlight the challenges they have faced when homeless and the need for reform of systems which have failed to prevent their homelessness.
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This article from the Child Abuse Review considers the potential efficacy of the para social worker (PSW) model in strengthening child protection at the community level in Uganda. The findings suggest that the model has considerable potential to strengthen community‐level protection of children in circumstances in which the operation of formal systems is limited by resource constraints and outside interventions may struggle to gain understanding and acceptance within communities.
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This study from the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry used data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project – a randomized controlled trial of foster care for children raised in psychosocially depriving institutions – to examine the associations of the caregiving environment with reward processing, executive functioning, and internalizing and externalizing psychopathology at ages 8, 12, and 16 years, and evaluated whether these associations change across development.
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This study from the journal of International Social Work examined deinstitutionalisation in Thailand. Qualitative interviews were conducted with a total of 27 child welfare practitioners and policy actors to explore their perceptions of Thai alternative care provision.
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This report from the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, UNHCR, CP AoR, and Save the Children builds on analysis undertaken in 2019 and incorporates 2019 and 2020 funding and additional funding streams related to refugee contexts to get an updated picture of the state of child protection funding in humanitarian contexts.
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Policies, Standards, and Guidelines |
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The purpose of this systematization report is to make available the information produced at a summit in the final stage of the cross-sectional review of the child protection system in Paraguay, and to be a communication and planning tool at the service of the Government agencies that were part of this process.
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This paper from the Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy maps multinational policy and legislation and its impact on services to careleavers and the challenges they experience.
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This Compendium documents UNICEF’s social policy interventions in Europe and Central Asia from 2014-2020 and includes 18 case studies from 15 different countries as well as stories from the field. The Compendium details UNICEF’s contributions in the ECA region across the following four Action Areas: (1) extending social protection adequacy and coverage, (2) improving public finance for children, (3) reducing child poverty through improved measurement, and (4) supporting decentralisation and local governance.
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The ECDI2030 is a tool, developed by UNICEF, to measure progress toward SDG indicator 4.2.1. It captures the achievement of key developmental milestones by children between the ages of 24 and 59 months. Mothers or primary caregivers are asked 20 questions about the way their children behave in certain everyday situations, and the skills and knowledge they have acquired.
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This paper describes an approach to supporting young people leaving Child Care Institutions (CCIs) in India that is potentially scalable to children in all CCIs. Based on a collaboration between Catalysts for Social Action (CSA), an NGO in Mumbai, and A Future for Every Child (AFEC), a non-profit registered in the US, the Bridge to Adulthood (B2A) program has helped 327 care leavers (CLs) from June 2016-December 2019.
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This document from Changing the Way We Care presents a summary of the process, results and lessons learned during a demonstration project in the department of Zacapa, Guatemala to implement best practices to prevent unnecessary family separation and strengthen families by identifying primary and specialized social services and bringing those services closer to families.
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This rapid evidence assessment (REA) - produced by ODI with the Evaluation Offices of ILO, IOM, UNHCR and UNICEF as well as the Office of Research of UNICEF - aimed to answer three questions: (1) What interventions have been effective in ensuring the protection of children on the move? (2) What are the implementation factors that make these interventions effective or that hamper effectiveness (for example the context of the intervention, and specific design features such as who is targeted)? and (3) What kinds of social welfare and child protection systems are linked to effective interventions?
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This study from the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal provides evidence from an evaluation of a bespoke family strengthening intervention for Child Support Grant beneficiaries in 10 urban communities in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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The Home Parenting Education and Support (HoPES) programme is a new intensive 8-week home-visiting intervention supporting the preservation and reunification of families with young children (aged 0–4 years) receiving child protection services following child abuse and/or neglect in Australia. The aims of the study were to (a) describe families who had participated in the Home Parenting Education and Support (HoPES) programme, (b) describe the key education content and support activities of the programme, and (c) identify the enablers and challenges in implementing HoPES.
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This article from the Child and Adolescent Social Work Journal explores children’s views and experiences of participation within the context of child protection assessment practice in Estonia. The findings of this study enable child protection workers as well as other professionals to learn from children, what is needed to better engage children to participate in matters affecting them.
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More than 100 child participants across East Asia convened with government officials to discuss the increased instances of child violence experienced during COVID-19 at World Vision’s Asia Pacific Child Well-Being Learning Exchange forum on 18 November 2020, organized in partnership with UNICEF East Asia and Pacific. During the event, child leaders highlighted the disconcerting increase in violence towards children, wide gaps in access to essential services - especially child protection - and appealed to the Asian leaders to fulfill their commitment to making sure every child has every right, as per the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
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RNZ, 30 November 2020
Times of India, 29 November 2020
The Independent, 24 November 2020
Deccan Herald, 23 November 2020
ABC News, 23 November 2020
CBC News, 17 November 2020
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Kaieteur News, 16 November 2020
The Guardian, 13 November 2020
CBC News, 12 November 2020
Yorkshire Post, 7 November 2020
Nightlife - ABC, 2 November 2020
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Disability Rights International, Validity Foundation, European Network for Independent Living, Youth Network Board
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Keystone Human Services, Inclusion International, SPOON, International Social Service - Burkina Faso, Shonaquip - South Africa, Ministry of Labour & Social Affairs - Vietnam, Auto-reprezentanți - Moldova, International Disability Alliance
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Aga Khan Foundation, ECDAN, The Lego Foundation, UNICEF
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Center for the Study of Social Policy
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World Health Organization (WHO)
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End Violence Against Children
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3-4 May 2021
Brussels, Belgium
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Nka (The Swedish Family Care Competence Centre) Linnaeus University and Eurocarers
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Global Social Service Workforce Alliance
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Global Studies of Childhood Journal
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Newsletter participants, currently 4,441 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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