Displaying 1 - 10 of 16
In January, 2024, UNICEF announced that across European and central Asian countries, family-based care has become the dominant type of alternative care for children without available parents.
The report, Pathways to Better Protection, gives promising indication that deinstitutionalisation policies are closing residential housing facilities and that increasingly, with the exception of children with disabilities, children are less likely to find themselves in residential care.
On this basis, UNICEF calls for continued investment in family-based arrangements and…
This article looks at the role of the State of India in ensuring the wellbeing of those it has the responsibility to protect. These include people who have suffered violence, indignity, hunger and life-threatening circumstances. The five-year planning of state and district plans have utilised more resources than it has produced outcomes and output. In this article the authors have compiled lessons learned from strategies that can enable duty holders to emerge as more responsible actors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is a series of written interviews conducted with care-experienced persons from Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka who have had experience with alternative care.
These interviews were published in the September 2023 issue of the Institutionalised Children Explorations and Beyond journal.
Highlights:
- New data show policy convergence among 15 ex-Soviet states in childcare deinstitutionalization.
- Countries adopted policies as ‘a package’ (goals + instruments), as promoted by international actors.
- Authoritarian states adopted the same policy instruments, as non-authoritarian states.
- Authoritarian states adopted ‘modern’, non-coercive policy instruments, based on the agentic individual.
- World culture and international advocacy appear key to childcare policy instrument choice.
Since COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, the world has experienced a series of waves and variants of the ever evolving and vaccine eluding COVID-19 virus. Initial responses predominantly focused on slowing the spread of the virus and included movement restrictions, intra-country and inter-country border closings, quarantine, isolation, social distancing, and mask wearing. Whilst these responses aimed to slow the spread of the virus, they also tended to overlook the prioritization of vulnerable populations such as children with disabilities, children in alternative care…
The case studies outlined in this publication draw upon earlier work, which suggested that young people leaving care may broadly fall into one of three groups: those successfully ‘moving on’ from care; those who are ‘survivors’; and those who are ‘strugglers’. These groups are clearly detailed in the text, including the ‘protective’ and ‘risk’ factors associated with each group – or put in terms of relevance to policy and practice, the factors which may promote (‘protective’) or pose barriers (‘risks’) to the resilience of young people from care to adulthood.
The three groups were…
The COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated inequalities and barriers to social inclusion for people with disabilities. These experiences of social exclusion have been felt to an even greater extent by women with disabilities and under-represented groups of people with disabilities, leading to a range of effects on the operations and priorities of Organisation of People with Disabilities (OPDs). To address a critical gap in the evidence base, the Disability Inclusion Helpdesk carried out a rapid assessment of the role of OPDs during the pandemic, and how the pandemic has affected OPDs’ operations…
Abstract
Adoption, kinship care, and foster care are the oldest known forms of alternative care in India. Whilst these are recognized as the most appropriate forms of care today, institutional care has become the most dominant form of care in India in the last 100 years, although it is meant to be ‘a measure of last resort’. As in most countries, childcare institutions in India cater for children up to 18 years old. The sudden withdrawal of support at 18 leaves these young people facing heightened challenges and poorer outcomes on the journey to independence, not only because of…
Abstract
As the world enters a new normal period following the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) global outbreak, the propensity toward the exclusion of the vulnerable group of children with disabilities is a current issue that must be given attention. This issue paper describes the collective actions to usher children with disabilities in the new normal post-COVID-19 period in the Philippines. These actions focus on assistive technologies to augment information and communication, critical services to sustain medical and developmental needs, adaptive learning methods to continue…
Abstract
Background
While COVID-19 outbreak has had adverse psychological effects in children with special needs, the mental state and burden on their caregivers during this pandemic has yet to be reported.
Aims
The objectives of this study were to describe the mental health status and the change in perceived strain among caregivers during the COVID-19 outbreak.
Methods and procedures
Two hundred sixty four caregivers completed an online survey that assessed demographics, use and perspective on tele-rehabilitation, homecare therapy, caregiver’s strain and mental health.…