The lack of care and protection facing children is a global crisis with billions of children experiencing abuse, neglect or exploitation, and many millions growing up outside of families, on the streets or in harmful institutional care. This lack of adequate care and protection is commonly the result of inequalities. Children without adequate care and protection are stigmatized and have inequitable access to basic services which, severely diminishes life chances and creates a spiral of disadvantage. In order to break this spiral, the authors of this report recommend a three-pronged strategy.

Care related sections of the Government of the Russian Federation's fourth and fifth combined report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (dated 3rd June 2011).

Research was conducted in five Rift Valley towns in Kenya in 2011 to understand the link between emergencies and the perceived increase of children joining the streets. Findings show that emergencies such as Post Election Violence and drought have caused children to join the streets. By far the biggest reason for children joining the streets was food insecurity. The authors advocate for an urgent, large-scale response to place children currently connected to the streets in durable situations in tandem with a multi-sectorial development approach to tackle and address the root of the crisis.

This article describes the results of a meta-analytic review aimed at providing an estimate of the prevalence of physical and emotional neglect by integrating prevalence figures from the body of research reporting on neglect. It discusses and makes recommendations on the dearth of studies investigating the prevalence of child neglect, despite evidence of its severe consequences on millions of children, and a global prevalence estimated to be above 15%.

The People’s Republic of China issued its third and fourth combined report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in June 2012. This extract of the report focuses on sections relevant to children's care and in particular those addressing Family Environment and Alternative Care

The Fifth Annual Report to Congress on Public Law 109-95, The Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act of 2005 highlights continued efforts made by the U.S. Government to improve coordination on behalf of vulnerable children in the past year.

Knowledge transfer is highlighted in this paper as a conceptual framework to understand mandated referral to Early Intervention (EI) services for young children with open child welfare cases.

This article describes research conducted in Malaysia on young people’s perceptions of “baby dumping,” or the abandonment of newborns and infants, a phenomenon that has become a “serious issue” in Malaysia. 

This paper presents new estimates of the average lifetime cost per child maltreatment (CM) victim in the United States and aggregate lifetime costs for all new cases of CM incurred in 2008 using an incidence-based approach. The authors find that the lifetime economic burden of CM is approximately $124 billion. Given this substantial economic burden, the authors argue that the benefits of prevention will likely outweigh the costs for effective programs.

This document is an English language summary brochure of the Manual of Best Practice titled ‘Child Abandonment and its Prevention in Europe,’ specific to child abandonment in the UK.