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Moldova’s National Program for Child Protection (2022-2026) articulates the commitment of the Government of Moldova and its partners to dramatically reducing the number children in institutions and to a child protection system anchored in securing safe and nurturing family care for all children. The Program includes the introduction of a moratorium on the placement of children under the age of three in residential care. The age was expanded to include children aged between 0-6 years to reflect the age range of children cared for in residential institutions. Despite notable achievements in…
This webinar was hosted by the Evidence for Impact Working Group of the Transforming Children’s Care Collaborative on March 30, 2023, and examined the Early Institutionalization Intervention Impact Project in Brazil.
The Early Institutionalization Intervention Impact Project's (EI-3) main goal is to document and compare the impacts that enhanced institutional care and enhanced foster care have on development during early childhood.
The EI-3 research project builds upon the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP). Conducted in…
This study examined longitudinal data from the Bucharest Early Intervention Project, a randomized controlled trial of foster care as an alternative to institutional care following exposure to severe psychosocial deprivation. The authors report data from 135 participants assessed in early adulthood (age 18 y). They found that 16 years after randomization occurred, those who had been randomized to high-quality foster care had significantly higher IQ scores (9 points, 0.6 SD) than those randomized to care as usual.
Mediation analyses provide evidence that the causal effect of the intervention…
The Toolkit was prepared to assist USAID Mission staff working in the Europe and Eurasia (E&E) region in identifying and propagating good practices in case management services. It provides the user with a comprehensive assessment framework for analyzing current systems, procedures, and practices against international standards and professional case management practices at both the case level and system level. This toolkit does not promote a specific model of case management since no one approach or model can be applied to every situation. Rather, it outlines the beneficial aspects,…
Abstract
This paper explores discourses that have informed debates concerning care leavers in Romania over the last 50 years to understand why rights‐based reforms introduced in the mid‐2000s have been difficult to implement. The discussion is based on the analysis of a maximum variation sample of 40 documents published between 1951 and 2018. Across two historical periods during and after communism, framed by three political events which changed significantly the context of public childcare and leaving care, this paper explores how dominant discourses on ‘public childcare’, ‘care leavers’…
The two-year project ‘Leaving Care – An Integrated Approach to Capacity Building of Professionals and Young People’, has aimed to build the capacity of professionals working with children and young people who are leaving care as well as to strengthen support networks for young care leavers. The project has been coordinated by SOS Children’s Villages International and implemented in cooperation with SOS Children’s Villages’…
This child-led research initiative was conducted under the umbrella of World Vision’s DEAR project (Development Education and Awareness Raising) and the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030. The authors worked together to raise children’s voices to the highest levels possible in order to have an impact on decisions and processes that affect them, especially the work around the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda. These child researchers were invited to choose one of the issues covered by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Each country team discussed these issues, and they decided to…
Abstract
Background: Institutional deprivation in early childhood is associated with neuropsychological deficits in adolescence. Using 20-year follow-up data from a unique natural experiment – the large scale adoption of children exposed to extreme deprivation in Romanian institutions in the 1980s – we examined, for the first time, whether such deficits are still present in adulthood and whether they are associated with deprivation-related symptoms of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
Methods: Adult neuropsychological functioning was…
Abstract
Childhood adversity may sensitize certain individuals to later stress which triggers or amplifies psychopathology. The current study uses data from a longitudinal randomized controlled trial to examine whether severe early neglect among children reared in institutions increases vulnerability to the effects of later stressful life events on externalizing problems in adolescence, and whether social enrichment in the form of high-quality foster care buffers this risk. Children abandoned to Romanian institutions were randomly assigned to a foster care intervention or care-as-usual…
Abstract
Background
Children reared in institutions experience profound deprivation that is associated with both heightened levels of psychopathology and deficits in executive functioning (EF). It is unclear whether deficits in EF among institutionally-reared children serve as a vulnerability factor that increases risk for later psychopathology. It is also unclear whether this putative association between EF and psychopathology is transdiagnostic (i.e. cuts across domains of psychopathology), or specific to a given syndrome. Thus, we examined whether global deficits in EF mediate the…