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For the approximately 760,000 children in alternative care in the European Union, the European Child Guarantee is a crucial opportunity to measure progress on deinstitutionalisation and the transition to community and family-based care. In doing so, it can catalyse reform and meaningful improvement of the lives and prospects of one of Europe’s most disadvantaged groups of children.
With Eurochild and UNICEF’s newly published policy brief, Children in alternative care in the Child Guarantee National…
There is a firm commitment by the European Union and its Member States to the deinstitutionalisation of children in alternative care and support for their transition to care that is family and community-based. Children growing up in alternative care have very often experienced significant trauma before being placed in care. Residential care, in particular, is known to expose them to additional risks if it is not equipped to provide them with the individualised care they need for their healthy development and social inclusion. Children need stable and safe relationships with caring adults to…
Eurochild and UNICEF carried out the DataCare project to map alternative care data systems across the 27 Member States of the European Union (EU-27) and the United Kingdom (UK). They found that despite differing national definitions and categorisations of alternative care across the region, enough data being published at national level can be used at an aggregate level to establish comparable indicators on the number of children in residential care and three other relevant and interlinked indicators.
As the European Union does not currently have comparable and Europe-wide data to gauge the…
This policy brief has been developed to serve as a guidance to practitioners while developing any practice on leaving care. It aims to stimulate further discussion amongst practitioners and reach a common professional consensus on formalised guidelines towards leaving care at global, national and local levels.
It is based on the deliberations of the “1st International Care Leavers Convention 2020” (ICLC) held from November 23-25, 2020, with a concluding session held on December 11, 2020 with policy makers from 9 countries. The ICLC also had a series of four pre-events that focused on…
This policy brief has been developed to serve as a guidance to policy makers while developing any policy on leaving care. It aims to stimulate further discussion amongst policy makers and reach a common professional consensus on formalised guidelines towards leaving care at global, national and local levels.
It is based on the deliberations of the “1st International Care Leavers Convention 2020” (ICLC) held from November 23-25, 2020, with a concluding session held on December 11, 2020 with policy makers from 9 countries. The ICLC also had a series of four pre-events that focused on…
The transition to adulthood is a time of trial and error for any young person. Stepping away from your adolescent support system and into adulthood is hard work that takes many years and many helping hands to get right, and every young person can expect to stumble now and again while navigating through those years.
But for far too many of the 850 or so young people who transition out of government care or a youth agreement in B.C. every year, turning 19 can be the start of a frightening solo journey into the unknown – one that their experiences in government care have left them…
This Casey Family Programs issue brief looks at the use of peer mentors (“parent partners”) who work with parents entering in and engaging with the child welfare system. These parent partners have already encountered and worked with the child welfare system themselves, and the mentoring that they offer can encourage and instill hope for parents initially interacting with the system. The brief outlines these parent partner programs’ benefits and program research evaluation findings, and provides guidance on how these programs are structured and funded. It also provides brief summaries of…
This report and recommendations have been developed to improve the housing journey of care leavers in Scotland, and prevent homelessness for people with experience of care. The Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Action Group (HARSAG) recommended that pathways to prevent homelessness should be developed for groups which evidence tells us are more at risk of homelessness and rough sleeping, including care leavers.
This guidance is the result of work undertaken between May and September 2019, including assessment of the problem, ambition, activity, partnerships and implementation process…
This paper attempts to recommend a suitable policy framework of aftercare services for Young Adult Orphans (YAOs) in India, with special reference to the state of Maharashtra. The paper presents definitions and scope of the issue, touches upon the proactive Role of Judiciary in developing the Juvenile Justice system, discusses the modes of alternative and institutional care in India and the major problems faced by care leavers, provides an analysis of the situation in Maharashtra, reviews the challenges in developing after care services, and provides recommendations for policy reform.
Executive Summary
Transitional youth are young people ages 16 to 24 who leave foster care without being adopted or reunited with their biological families and/or who are involved in the juvenile justice system, where they may be in detention or subject to terms of probation. With childhoods often marked by trauma and a lack of stability, transitional youth face notoriously poor outcomes across many areas of life. Compared with their peers, they experience more interactions than average with the criminal justice system; suffer from mental health problems at higher rates; and struggle to…