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First Years First Priority is a Europe-wide campaign set up to advocate for prioritization of early childhood development in public policies, with a particular focus on families and children who are at greater risk of discrimination and exclusion. This briefing provides a description of the policy context in which the 'First Year, First Priority' campaign is launched. It aims to explain:
- Why is the 'First Years, First Priority' campaign needed?
- What problems does the campaign seek to address and what solutions is it advocating for?
- How does the…
Pregnancy through age three is the most critical period for children’s development. Yet the COVID-19 pandemic has battered working parents of young children, with what are likely to be significant and long-lasting negative consequences. In this brief, the authors propose a set of enhanced Infant-Toddler policies—in the areas of income support, child care, and paid family leave—to better support these families and improve their children’s long-term health and wellbeing.
Overview
This brief summarizes actions that programme planners and implementers should take to minimize the impact that emergencies have on the lives of young children and their families. It calls upon all relevant stakeholders to invest in evidence-based policies and interventions that have been shown to build resilience and mitigate the harmful effects of emergencies.
This issue brief highlights the importance of understanding the concerns and needs of children and families in rural communities in the United States, their strengths and resources, and the cultural sensitivity required of child welfare professionals as they work to achieve safety, permanency, and well-being for rural children.
This KIDS COUNT policy report highlights the benefits of family care for children and the need to prioritize family settings for all children in the child welfare system in the United States. According to the report, one in seven children under the care of the US child welfare system is placed in a group setting despite a lack of any documentation of the child’s medical or behavioral need that would necessitate care in a group or residential setting. Furthermore, says the report, some children (particularly adolescents) are placed directly into group homes upon removal from the family and…
In this brief article, the authors make their case for extending the age limit for young people to receive care in the foster care system, focusing on the UK and the US.
This policy brief by Save the Children introduces the background, goals, and guiding principles of the Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children while also explaining why family-based care is a preferred care arrangement over institutions. Furthermore, it suggests policy and practice recommendations to further protect children without appropriate care and strengthen families and communities. Save the Children has been involved at the international level in the development of the Guidelines and at the country level in efforts to ensure use of the Guidelines as a framework for reform.…
This document provides an overview of attachment and attachment theory, stressing the importance of healthy attachments for children, especially looked after children. The document presents a policy context for children in care in Scotland, including the interventions available, and those underway, for at-risk and vulnerable children and families. The document also includes a description of the evidence on the impact of early experiences on brain development as well as the evidence on effective preventive and therapeutic work with children and families. The report finds that the most…
Over the last decade, research in basic human development has revealed that institutional care - particularly when used to serve children under five - is not an appropriate form of alternative care, and instead of protecting children can put them at further risk of harm. Efforts have been made to transition international thinking away from the use of orphanage-based systems and toward providing family-based care. With this in mind, the Congressional Coalition on Adoption Institute’s (CCAI) The Way Forward Project brought together a group of…
Child rights must be at the centre of all adoptions in Nepal, says this major study on adoption released in Kathmandu by the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and Terre des hommes (Tdh). The main conclusion of the 60-page report, ‘Adopting the rights of the child: a study on intercountry adoption and its influence on child protection in Nepal’, is that intercountry adoption should not be allowed to resume without appropriate safeguards being put in place at all levels. Only four out of every 100 children adopted in Nepal are adopted by a Nepali family and many children put…