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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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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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A study of attitudes towards residential care in Cambodia
The Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation, with technical support from UNICEF, launched a study on attitudes towards residential care in Cambodia to understand prevailing attitudes and to generate evidence for policy development an
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Application of the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children: A Guide for Practitioners
This publication was prepared by the Red Latinoamericana de Acogimiento Familiar (Network of Latin-American Fostering Families), RELAF, with the cooperation of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). It is mainly aimed at professional operators and p
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EveryChild Moldova’s Programme Experience: Improving Children’s Lives Through Deinstitutionalisation
This Programme Review documents the evolution of the EveryChild (EvC) Programme since 1994, presenting the development of interventions to improve the lives of children through deinstitutionalisation and identifying the best practices and lessons that may
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Implementation of the national strategy and action plan for the reform of the residential childcare system in Moldova 2007-2012: Evaluation report
In July 2007 the Government of Moldova approved a National Strategy and Action Plan to reform its residential childcare system. At the time, 12,000 children were thought to be living in large orphanages and boarding schools in Moldova. Previous studies ha
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Needs Assessment of Reintegrated Families in Georgia. Strengthening Child Care Services and Systems
Georgia’s child welfare reform has made incredible strides over the past eight years focusing largely on ending harmful child institutionalization. The child welfare reform process that started in 2005 is being successfully implemented by the Government o
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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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“YARO NA KOWA NE” Children belong to everyone. Save the Children Regional Kinship Care Research
Children without appropriate care (CwAC) is a focus area for Save the Children’s child protection work for the period 2010-2015. The goal is that by 2015, 4.6 million children without appropriate care, and their families, including children affected by HI
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“BANA BONSU MBETU” All are our children. Save the Children Kinship Research in West Central Africa- Democratic Republic of Congo
Save the Children is undertaking innovative participative research in West and Central Africa on informal alternative care mechanisms,with a particular focus on kinship care. An estimated 15.8% of children under the age of 15 years in West and Central Afr
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Ending the placement of children under three in institutions: Support nurturing families for all young children. Report from the international ministerial conference, Sofia, 21–22 November 2012
The ministerial conference under the theme ‘Ending the placement of children under three in institutions: Support nurturing families for all young children’, which took place in Sofia Bulgaria, 21 - 22 November 2012, was organized by the Government of t
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Care Standards, Egypt [Arabic]
This is a newly developed set of National Care Standards that were created as a result of cooperative effort between Save the Children, the Ministry of Social Solidarity (MOSS), and UNICEF after a series of workshops. The standards are currently only avai
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Consultations with children on their priorities for the post-MDG framework
In late 2012 and early 2013, consultations were held in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi with boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 17 years who were living without parental care. Participating children were living in the following circumstances: 1. those livin