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Alternative care
Millions of children are living without the loving, nurturing care that allows them to be safe and grow up enjoying their childhood. Many children remain in families unable to offer them adequate care because they are too poor and lack adequate support. Other children end up in poor quality alternative care or on the street.
Save the Children recognizes that residential care can be appropriate for a small minority of children and should be available as a last resort for those children with no other options. In those contexts, regulated, safe institutions that meet agreed-upon standards can save children's lives and give them opportunities to learn and develop that they would not otherwise have. However, scientific evidence suggests that institutional care can cause significant harm to children's physical, intellectual and emotional development, with children under the age of three being particularly at risk.
Save the Children supports the development of family-based alternative care options in children's own communities for those children who cannot be with their parents. These options include foster care, kinship care and domestic adoption. The organization supports the transition away from existing institutional care services while at the same time ensuring minimum standards during the remaining time institutions provide care for children.
There is also growing international, regional and country level action towards tackling both care and protection issues via strengthening national child protection systems and reforming the care system within the broader framework.
Photo: Chloe White/Save the Children
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Children and adolescents without parental care in Latin America: Contexts, causes and consequences of the deprivation of the right to community- family- based care
This paper is based on the Latin American Report 'Children and adolescents without parental care in Latin America- Contexts, causes and consequences of the deprivation of the right to community- family- based care', which was prepared using reports from 1
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Prohibiting all corporal punishment of children: progress and delay [Leaflet]
'Prohibiting all corporal punishment of children: progress and delay' presents facts and figures on the global movement towards law reform to prohibit corporal punishment in all settings, including the home. It graphically illustrates the percentage of th
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Moving Forward: Implementing the ‘Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children
The handbook 'Moving Forward: Implementing the ‘Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children,’ was developed by the Centre for Excellence for Looked After Children in Scotland (CELSIS) together with a team of child protection experts, governments, UN A
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Ending legalised violence against children: Prohibiting and eliminating corporal punishment in all alternative care and day care settings
Corporal punishment is inflicted on children in nearly all societies and cultures. Its legal and social acceptance is a potent symbol of children’s perceived low status. Although it is just as violent to hit a child as it is to hit an adult, by 2011, only
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Case Study. Creating a competent workforce by training social workers in Indonesia
A Case Study for social work education in Indonesia. Save the Children's efforts in this area would help create a competent work force of social welfare professionals who could assist in implementing the "institution to family based care" support for vuln
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Child Protection Initiative: Building rights-based national child protection systems: a concept paper to support Save the Children’s work
A concept paper on rights-based national child protection systems developed within the framework of Save the Children's Child Protection Initiative (CPI), which is designed to strengthen local or national child protection systems that respond to and preve
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Improving Child Protection Responses in Indonesia: Learning from the Protection Homes for Children (RPSAs
This report, written by Florence Martin, is based on the results of research carried out as a joint collaboration between the Ministry of Social Affairs (Kemensos), Save the Children in Indonesia and a team of Social Workers and Social Scientists from STK
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PowerPoint presentations for the Training Manual Children without Appropriate Care for Asia and the Pacific: The Care System and its place within the broader Child Protection System [Session 4a]
PowerPoint presentation that is part of the session materials for "the Training Manual Children without Appropriate Care for Asia and the Pacific" published by Save the Children Child Protection Initiative (CPI). It first presents UNICEF's protective envi
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Children without Appropriate Care: Training Manual for Asia and the Pacific
The training package "Children without Appropriate Care: Training Manual for Asia and the Pacific" has been prepared by Louise Melville Fulford for the Save the Children Child Protection Initiative (CPI). Applicable for both Save the Children staff and no
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Inter-agency Statement calling for a focus on strengthening family care and appropriate alternative care in the 2014 United Nations General Assembly Resolution on the Rights of the Child
A coaltion of over 40 international, regional and national NGOs and networks have issued a joint call to member States of the United Nations General Assembly (UN GA) to focus the 2014 Resolution on the Rights of the Child on strengthening family care and
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Advancing the rights of children deprived of parental care: Domestic adoption of children in Kenya. Master of Advanced Studies in Children's Rights
Thesis produced by Ms. Denise Stuckenbruck in the framework of the Master of Advanced Studies in Children’s Rights, an interdisciplinary programme jointly organised by the Institut Universitaire Kurt Bösch (IUKB) and the University of Fribourg, Switzerlan
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Reaching for Home: Global learning on family reintegration in low and lower-middle income countries
This inter-agency, desk-based research aims to arrive at a clearer understanding of reintegration practices for separated children in low and lower-middle income countries. The research pulls together learning from practitioners and academics working with