Resources Database

This guidance note by INEE and the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action aims to promote integration and collaboration across the two humanitarian sectors of education and child protection). It orients stakeholders in both sectors to principles, frameworks, opportunities, and resources for program integration in order to ensure efficient, targeted, and effective interventions that result in improved outcomes for children and young people.

This article explores the challenges of child and youth care workers (CYCWs) working with children in South Africa. This article reports on qualitative in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with 16 CYCWs and the data were subjected to thematical analysis. The findings indicate that CYCWs involved in child welfare experience not only a lack of recognition but also conflict, overwork and other negative job characteristics that affect their caring responsibilities, given the complexity and demanding roles of working with children.

Resilience has been identified as a protective factor that improves the ability to manage stress, promotes wellbeing and enables individuals to thrive in adverse circumstances. Many social auxiliary workers function independently with sporadic and brief supervision. Considering the stressful work environment that social auxiliary workers must face, it is essential that they be equipped to effectively manage the stressors of social work practice.

Field practicum is an integral part of social work education, and students of bachelor's and master's levels need to gain the requisite experience of field practicum to achieve the degrees. Like many practice-based disciplines, social work has been facing enormous challenges in arranging field practicum during COVID-19. This qualitative study aims to understand the experiences of social work faculties, students, and agency representatives for field practicum in the time of the COVID crisis in Bangladesh.

Effective and sustainable reintegration requires a solid conceptual framework and an appropriate and standardized case management approach. Kenya was lacking a comprehensive, participatory, and standardized package that included guidance, standard operating procedures, tools and training on what and how to conduct case management to ensure the wellbeing and eventual family placement of children without parental care. This gap often resulted in programming practice of varying quality and inadequate resources committed to reintegration of children into families.

Case management is the process of identifying, assessing, planning, referring, and tracking referrals, and monitoring the delivery of services in a timely, context-sensitive, individualized, and client-centered manner. Case management is used within child welfare and protection programming, and has been shown to improve decision-making and service delivery, to enhance child and family outcomes.  

This document provides guidance on inclusive MHPSS programming in humanitarian emergencies. It is designed to highlight essential frameworks and principles, and the need for robust and sustainable MHPSS programming, rather than to provide detailed MHPSS technical guidance.

MHPSS mainstreaming is identified as best practice where capacity exists and contextual conditions are in place, and it underpins CBM Global’s work in community based MHPSS approaches which are holistic and person-centred, and go beyond the health sector only.

Child welfare workers experience burnout at a higher rate than other helping professions. Burnout increases the likelihood of turnover. Creating a work environment where peer support thrives can mitigate burnout, improve worker well-being, and reduce turnover. This infographic, from the U.S National Child Welfare Workforce Institute, desribes the importance of peer support in the workforce and how organizations can cahmpion peer support. 

Workers are the heart of the child welfare system. By centering their well-being, organizations are better able to support children and families. This infographic from the U.S. National Child Welfare Workforce Institute describes how child welfare organizations can center child welfare worker well-being to better support children and families.

Changing child welfare practice and culture to advance racial equity begins by talking openly. Listening to diverse experiences and ideas and using appreciative inquiry can help teams generate solutions for removing barriers to equity for families, children, and communities.

Client violence against childcare workers is a relevant problem due to its impact on their well-being and the service they provide due to their significant role in the child protection process. This study explored violence against childcare workers using a systematic literature review.

On 26 April 2023, the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance and the Better Care Network (BCN) organized an event, under the auspices of the Ukraine Children’s Care Group, with child protection and care actors focused on strengthening the social service workforce as part of the recovery process in Ukraine to support a transformed care and protection system for children. The aim of the event was to bring actors together to better understand the impact of the conflict on th

Children and youth placed in residential youth care (RYC) exhibit complex emotional needs and significant mental health problems. Better outcomes in RYC have been associated with emotional availability from care workers. Nevertheless, many care workers struggle either with their own mental health and/or with adequately providing support for the mental health problems of youth under their care. Thus, staff training is recommended by international guidelines.

The Coronavirus (COVID−19) pandemic has increased anxiety and stress among childcare workers in many communities. This has given rise to the question of whether childcare workers have the capabilities to execute their operational responsibilities effectively during this period in ensuring that the children are well taken care of.

The Technical Guidance on Family Reintegration Procedure in Haiti is a practical guide for the social service workforce from the State, Civil Society Organisations and NGOs working with children separated from their families and being placed in residential care institutions or in other forms of alternative care in Haiti. This Guidance is born from the needs expressed by the Institut of Bien Etre Social et de Recherche (IBESR) and several NGOs active in Haiti of support tools to promote clear and culturally adapted procedures for family reintegration.

In this episode of European Social Network Talks, Karin Schweinegger, Director of Human Resources, Consortium of Retirement Homes in Vienna, Austria and  Ana Radulescu, Director, Social Assistance Training and Evaluation Centre, Romania for a conversation on how organisations can develop their resilience capacities to build the workforce's capacities to respond to crisis, calling on national and European policy makers for support to promote and invest in social services as they are the backbone of our societies.

UNICEF's Global Annual Results Report 2022: Goal Area 3, summarizes UNICEF's work in 2022 under goal three of their strategic plan: Every child is protected from violence, exploitation, abuse, neglect and harmful practices. In 2022, UNICEF scaled up child protection prevention and response programming to address the most significant risk and protective factors across the humanitarian–development–peace nexus.

Restorative justice is an approach that focuses on collaboration between the offender and the community. It requires the offender to accept responsibility for their decisions and the impact of their offenses on the victim and the community. For juvenile offenders who are involved in both the juvenile justice and child welfare systems, restorative practices often involve teaching skills to live independently and develop healthy relationships.

The U.S. Court Improvement Program provides Federal funds to State and Tribal courts to support efforts to improve child welfare court practices, including collaboration between courts and child welfare agencies. This factsheet from the U.S. Child Welfare Information Gateway focuses on collaboration and relationship building between legal and judicial communities and child welfare agencies and provides several examples of successful and promising approaches.

i-RESTORE 2.0 project builds on the i-RESTORE project, which focused on promoting the use of restorative justice in cases involving child victims of crime and strengthening the capacities of justice professionals. Based on the results of that project, i-RESTORE 2.0 was drafted to go a step further and create accessible quality restorative justice processes for children in contact with the law.