Newsletter | September 2025 | | | Latest Updates on Children's Care | | | Focus On: Global Charter on Children’s Care Reform | | | |
The Global Charter on Children's Care Reform is now open for signature by all national governments and for endorsement by civil society and inter-governmental bodies. Launched as part of the Global Campaign on Children's Care Reform—an initiative of the U.K. Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office—the Charter builds on existing international commitments and calls for urgent, multi-sectorial action to transform care for children worldwide.
By signing the Charter, governments commit to:
- Upholding the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.
- Investing in families, children, care leavers, and inclusive services.
- Ending violence against children and harmful practices like orphanage tourism.
All national governments are encouraged to join this movement and stand alongside other global leaders by signing the charter—and by following through on their commitments with meaningful investment and implementation. Civil society organisations and inter-governmental bodies are encouraged to formally endorse the Charter as a visible demonstration of their support for transforming care for children worldwide.
How you can get involved:
- Read and share the Charter widely with colleagues, partner organisations, and allies across sectors.
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If you work with or within a government, share the Charter with decision-makers and encourage formal signature. Ministries can confirm support by sending a note verbale (or Ministerial-level letter) to the U.K. Mission in their country.
- If you work with a civil society organisation or inter-governmental body, encourage leadership to endorse the Charter. To endorse, send a brief email or letter of support from your organisations leadership to ChildrensCareReformCampaign@fcdo.gov.uk.
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A global working group under the Transforming Children’s Care collaborative is providing strategic, high-level inputs to the implementation of the Global Campaign and Charter. Membership is open to all stakeholders with relevant expertise and capacities. To join, ensure you are registered with the collaborative, then click here to sign up for the working group.
The Charter is available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic. A formal launch is scheduled to take place during the high-level week of the UN General Assembly.
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Global Campaign on Children’s Care Reform: Overview
This brief provides an overview of the Global Campaign on Children's Care Reform, of which the Global Charter is a key component. It explains the campaign’s goals and provides details on how national governments can sign the Charter. It is available in English, French, Spanish and Arabic.
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Global Charter on Children’s Care Reform: Child Friendly Version
This version of the Charter is designed for children, offering an accessible explanation of its purpose and why it matters. It highlights, in clear and simple language, how the Charter seeks to ensure that every child can grow up in a safe and loving family environment.
| | Understanding the Situation | | | | |
What Can We Learn from Care Leavers’ Experience in Moldova?
This one-page English-language synopsis of the full report in Romanian titled, “Ce putem învăța de la tinerii cu experiență trăită în sistemul de îngrijire din Republica Moldova?” (What can we learn from young people with lived experience in Moldova's care system?), offers a compelling peer-to-peer perspective from 56 young people who transitioned out of Moldova’s care system.
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Community-level Social Welfare Workforce: Analysis on the State of Play in Nine Countries
This report, based on a study across nine countries, examines how to strengthen the community-level social welfare workforce as a vital but under-resourced part of national child protection systems. It calls for context-specific strategies that clearly define roles and competencies, build capacity, and align with local norms, mechanisms, and resources to enhance child protection outcomes.
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An Approach to Care Models for Disabled Children in Need of Protection in Selected Countries
Child protection systems have traditionally emphasized remedial services over prevention, often relying on uniform care models that fail to account for children’s diverse needs. This study examines the child protection systems of countries representing various welfare models (the United States, Germany, Sweden, and Turkey) and comparatively evaluates the practices for disabled children in need of protection in these systems.
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Child Adoption and Custody in Islamic Law: A Meta-Analysis And Systematic Review
Child adoption remains a complex and sensitive issue within Islamic legal discourse, particularly due to its tension with Western legal frameworks that often permit full adoptive rights, including name changes and inheritance. This study looks at the central question: how can Islamic law reconcile child protection needs with religious norms that prohibit altering a child’s lineage?
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The Human Rights Challenges Experienced by Queer Youth in Out-of-Home Care: A Systematic Scoping Review
The human rights challenges faced by Queer youth in out-of-home care, such as foster and residential care, have largely been overlooked in child protection research, policy, and practice development. This systematic scoping review aims to identify and synthesize the existing international, English-language, empirical research documenting the human rights challenges experienced by Queer youth in out-of-home care systems.
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Orphanage Trafficking in Nepal: Legal Gaps, Protection Failures, and Reform Imperatives
This article examines the increasing phenomenon of orphanage trafficking in Nepal—a practice involving the coercive separation of children from their families and placement into unauthorized care facilities under false pretenses, often for financial exploitation. It evaluates relevant constitutional provisions, national child protection and anti-trafficking legislation, and international obligations to assess Nepal’s compliance with its legal responsibilities.
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Integrated Healthcare for Youth in Foster Care: A Narrative Review
Integrated healthcare models combining behavioral and primary care provide solutions for vulnerable pediatric populations, especially youth in foster care, facing disproportionately high rates of chronic conditions and mental health issues. This review synthesizes current literature to assess the impact of integrated care on health outcomes for youth in foster care in the United States.
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Young People Who Spend Unauthorised Time Away from Care: A Scoping Review
A scoping review of 31 studies (2013–2023) examined why children and young people in out-of-home care in Australia spend unauthorised time away from placements. Findings show these absences often reflect efforts to seek safety, stability, connection, autonomy, and belonging, highlighting systemic shortcomings and the need for youth-informed practices that address needs both in care and while away.
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Corporal Punishment of Children: the Public Health Impact
This groundbreaking new report, from WHO, examines the global prevalence, risk factors, and lifelong consequences of child corporal punishment, affecting over a billion children each year at home and in schools. It highlights overwhelming evidence of harm with no benefits and calls for legal reforms alongside support for parents and teachers to adopt positive, non-violent discipline.
| | Policies, Standards, and Guidance | | | | |
Strengthening Families in India: Framework and Guidance
Strengthening Families in India: Framework & Guidance, jointly developed by the India Alternative Care Network (IACN) and Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC), aims to consolidate existing knowledge, interventions, and promising practices led by government bodies and civil society organizations across India.
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National Parenting Training Manual for Uganda
Uganda’s first mapping study on parenting interventions (2020–2021) highlighted the need for evidence-based approaches and clear delivery guidelines to strengthen parenting programming. In response, the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development developed a parenting manual to harmonize stakeholders’ efforts, streamline programming, and strengthen families nationwide.
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Solomon Islands Child and Family Welfare System: Multi-Sectoral Implementation Plan 2025-2030
The Solomon Island's Child and Family Welfare Act 2017 signalled a strong commitment from the government to strengthen national efforts to prevent and respond to violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation of children. This Multi-Sectoral Implementation Plan 2025–2030 outline's the government's plan to improve services to strengthen family and community caring practices and to ensure a timely and appropriate response to all children in need of care and protection.
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Institutions: Accountability as a Key to Reforming Children’s Alternative Care
This chapter of the Roadmap for Action on Children Deprived of Liberty 2025-2030 outlines key elements required for deinstitutionalisation for effective children’s care reforms that are accountable to children. It proposes a two-pronged approach of systems change reforms reinforced by accountability mechanisms to achieve this for children in institutions specifically for care purposes.
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Children's Social Care: Fourth Report of Session 2024–25
This report, from the UK House of Commons Education Committee makes a series of recommendations on issues affecting all types of care, including foster care, adoption, kinship care, children’s homes, and support for disabled children in the UK.
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Framework for Action
The Framework for Action is an interagency initiative, led by UNICEF, Save the Children and World Vision, driving global action behind efforts to strengthen child protection systems, mobilising the complex array of stakeholders at sub-national, national, regional and global levels to implement pledges and commitments to end violence against children. These collective efforts will turn promises to action taking momentum from the Global Ministerial Conference to End Violence Against Children and beyond to bring about transcendent change for children.
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Toolkit: Building the investment case for ending violence against children
This toolkit, from the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children, presents the economic rationale for investing in the prevention and response to violence against children, emphasizing that such spending should be seen as an investment rather than a cost. Part A outlines the societal and economic benefits of preventing violence, while Part B provides a step-by-step guide for practitioners to develop evidence-based investment cases to persuade governments to adopt integrated, cross-sectoral strategies.
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Supervised Independent Living in Uganda
Supervised independent living involves a child or young person living without an adult but receiving regular supervision, guidance, mentoring and monitoring from an assigned adult mentor. This case study explores lessons learned from three non-governmental organisation (NGO) programmes in Uganda.
See also:
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An Integrated Model to Prevent Family Separation for Children Living with Disabilities in Rwanda
Over the past decade, Rwanda has reformed its care system to prioritize family-based care, with recent efforts focusing on supporting children with disabilities through a multi-sector, community-based approach. This short case study explains why this integrated model is important to prevent family separation, outlines the key components of this approach, and provides some lessons learnt from the pilot.
See also:
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Formative and Summative Evaluation of the Childcare and Deinstitutionalization Reforms
This report presents the main findings, conclusions, and recommendations of a formative and summative evaluation of the childcare and deinstitutionalisation reforms in North Macedonia for the period of 2009 2022. The evaluation was commissioned by the UNICEF Europe and Central Asia Region Office (ECARO), as part of its multi-country evaluation of the impact of national child care reforms across eight countries in Europe and Central Asia.
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National Summit on “Reimagining the Care System for Children in India” Report
This report provides an overview of the National Summit on “Reimagining the Care System for Children in India” held on the 30th of March, 2025, in New Delhi.The Summit sought to create a space to reflect on progress, challenges and opportunities in strengthening family-based care in India and provide a platform to share promising practices and approaches.
See also:
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We would love to learn more about your work as a practitioner so that your local, national and/or regional lessons and experiences in the field can be shared with other practitioners.
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Practitioner Learning Video: The Formalization of Kafaalah in Kenya
In this video, practitioners, faith leaders, and a Kafaalah caregiver share experiences in promoting and strengthening Kafaalah as an important part of family-based alternative care in Kenya. They highlight the benefits and challenges—including legal, cultural, and administrative barriers—and share lessons on supporting families, ensuring child-centred placements, and safeguarding children’s best interests within the Kafaalah system. An associated discussion guide provides a framework for discussing the video.
This video is part of a series of practitioner learning videos from Kenya. For more practitioner learning videos, watch our Cambodia and Uganda series.
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Digital Dialogue: Care Reform, Protection Systems
The second WHO and UNICEF-facilitated Digital Dialogue, following the 2024 Global Ministerial Conference, explored how care reform can help prevent violence against children. Co-hosted by Better Care Network, Lumos, UNICEF, and WHO, the session highlighted country experiences, regional efforts, and the urgent need for integrated, family-based solutions to end institutional violence and protect every child.
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Digital Dialogue: Ending Corporal Punishment
During this event, as part of the Digital Dialogue series, WHO launches a landmark report presenting overwhelming scientific evidence and calls for urgent action to protect children.
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Supervised independent living in Uganda
This video from UNICEF and Changing the Way We Care describes lessons learnt from the use of supervised independent living in Uganda for adolescents and young adult care leavers.
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Closing the Revolving Doors: A Lifespan Approach to Deinstitutionalization
On June 9, Keystone Human Services International and partners hosted a side event at the 18th Conference of States Parties to the CRPD on “Closing the Revolving Doors: A Lifespan Approach to Deinstitutionalization.” Panelists explored challenges, opportunities, and success stories in advancing sustainable care reform and community-based supports for children and adults with disabilities.
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1st India National Family Summit
This video shows highlights from The National Summit on “Reimagining the Care System for Children in India” held on the 30th of March, 2025, in New Delhi. The Summit aimed to foster collaboration, learning and collective action among key stakeholders from government, civil society, academia, and individuals with lived experience.
| | Deadline 15 September 2025 | | | Deadline 16 September 2025 | | | September 2025 - February 2026 | | | |
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