Better Care Network highlights recent news pieces related to the issue of children's care around the world. These pieces include newspaper articles, interviews, audio or video clips, campaign launches, and more.
An alarming connection exists between residential care facilities, such as orphanages and children’s homes, and human trafficking. Orphanage trafficking occurs when children from vulnerable families are actively recruited into residential care for profit or other forms of exploitation within the orphanage. Often a child finder is hired by an orphanage to go out and recruit children through deception or coercion of family members.
Many children in Vietnam who lost their parents to COVID aren't getting by as support from the outside world is unsustainable.
The war in Gaza has already let to an unprecedented loss of life, but there's also growing concern about the destruction of public and private buildings. Now a senior UN official has told BBC News of his fears that the widespread damage will lead to a "lost generation" of young people.
In more than 700 cases over five years, Georgia reported inadequate housing as the sole reason for taking a child into foster care, a WABE and ProPublica analysis found. Advocates say it would be cheaper to help families get housing.
'Long road ahead before ending Europe and Central Asia’s long, painful legacy’ of institutionalisation of children, as new UNICEF report highlights rate of children living in residential care across region is double the global average
Historically, the needs of LGBTQ+ youth in child welfare systems have mostly not been addressed or, worse, have been invisible to those charged with caring for them.
One council worker said they had to ‘beg, borrow and steal’ to get the right support
Children as young as two are stuck living in state-run homes with paid carers despite a royal commission calling seven years ago for an end to the practice. Over the Christmas and New Year period there were hundreds of children living in these homes after being removed from unsafe families.
Beginning this month, Washington officials have new authority to root out abuse and neglect of children housed in private boarding schools, residential treatment centers and the state’s school for the deaf. Senate Bill 5515 tasks the Department of Children, Youth and Families with investigating allegations and approving licenses for facilities that had previously been beyond the scope of the child welfare agency.
Ukraine has condemned a decree signed by Russian President Vladimir Putin making it possible to confer Russian citizenship on Ukrainian children moved to Russia. Last March, the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Putin over Russia's policy of forced child deportations. The Ukrainian foreign ministry called the decree illegal.