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In 2019, with UNICEF’s support, the Government of Rwanda began the final phase of the Tubarerere Mu Muryango Programme/Let’s Raise Children in families care reform programme that aimed to see the end of large-scale residential care in the country. This last phase of the programme focused on returning children with disabilities in residential care to their families or placing them in foster care.
This case study documents the story of David's reintegration from a residential care home for children with disabilities in Rwanda to kinship care with his grandparents.
This…
The Returning to Original Vision case story demonstrates reunification of children with disabilities as a critical step in transition. It also highlights the challenges of maintaining organizational vision within a process of transforming services. This case story is meant to illustrate transition, the actors involved, the challenges and the success factors; recognizing that each transition is an individual process with different starting points, different dynamics and different evolutions.
This case story complements the…
This study aims to advance the understanding of children with special needs in foster care by identifying the characteristics, processes, and outcomes of their placement. The study uses a quantitative approach to identify 190 children with special needs (registered) from among 2,157 foster children in Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, Spain and examines key data covering 2008 to 2018. The results show that children with special needs are overrepresented in placements with single-parent foster carers (mainly women), raising questions about the extent to which the care system takes the…
Child helplines exist in many countries around the world, offering a vital source of support to children and young people in distress. In many cases child helplines also represent an essential component of national child protection systems, bringing together a variety of actors to safeguard children in need. The COVID-19 pandemic has both heightened demand for child protection services and required organisations to adapt their work in order to continue to provide support to children, families and communities.
These Practitioner Guidance Papers share the approaches of five Family for Every…
People with disabilities have the right to live in the community, according to Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, more than a decade after the adoption of the CRPD by the UN and nearly global ratification, children with disabilities continue to be placed in institutions in every region of the world. Worse still, low-middle income countries that have never had systems of institutionalization have started to build them.
In 2017, the CRPD Committee adopted general comment No. 5 on Article 19 on living independently and being included in the…
In this short editorial, the organization New Beginnings shares the stories of three of the families they work with who have wanted to explain what lockdown has meant for them during this peculiar time. One of the stories comes from a parent whose children were removed from her care two weeks into lockdown. Another comes from a parent whose daughter has since been reunited with her from foster care.
This synthesis is part of a series of periodic digests of COVID-19 related resources (guidance, news, & academic articles). The purpose is to identify emerging child protection risks/barriers, responses, and resource gaps based on the information gathered. Each synthesis analyses a different topic related to child protection during COVID-19.
This evidence synthesis analyses emerging practices and preliminary guidance for engaging children in the response to CP challenges during the various stages of COVID-19 and other infectious disease outbreaks (e.g. Ebola). It explores both barriers…
The purpose of this evidence synthesis is to examine the impact of school closures on the protection and wellbeing of children globally, with a focus on the majority world. It was carried out by reviewing existing literature published in English and French. This included 31 academic articles and reports and guidance notes from the grey literature and 59 news articles published online between April 22 and July 13, 2020.
In this blog post, Anna Riatti - coordinator of the UNICEF Refugee and Migrant Response in Italy - describes how UNICEF is supporting refugee and migrant children in Italy in light of the COVID-19 crisis. This support includes remote counselling and psychological support for refugees and migrants, over the phone or online. This support extends to guardians and foster care families who need support and stress management.
This brief identifies the steps necessary to realize an integrated system of care, reviews two current approaches, and makes recommendations—including specifying policy reforms that would promote interagency collaboration, integration, service delivery, and improved outcomes for California’s children, both with and without disabilities. As a full commitment from the state administration is necessary to realize the proposed solutions at scale, this brief recommends the formation of a statewide interagency leadership council that has legitimacy, decision-making authority, and accountability…