Resources Database

This operational guidance describes how the Government of Rwanda conducts case management for reintegration of children from residential institutions to family-based care, including children with disabilities. It contains all the information needed for a Child Protection and Welfare Officer to carry out their case management tasks so that children can live safely and thrive with their own family or in family-based alternative care.

UNICEF's Child Protection Learning Briefs aim to extract, synthesise and analyse learning on child protection risks and programme adaptation in the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to improving policy, advocacy and programme results during infectious disease outbreaks. This learning brief examines how UNICEF has supported the continuity of efforts in child protection and in protecting women and girls at risk of gender-based violence by adapting services and programmes during COVID-19.

To effectively mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in the light of protecting children’s wellbeing, policy and practice responses must be distinctively designed to address children’s wellbeing needs. Policymakers and those working with children are at the heart of the pandemic response.

The goal of this case study, produced by the Alliance for Children Everywhere (ACE), is to demonstrate a working model of family-based care in Zambia which can produce a replicable framework that can be modified for other regions and circumstances. This paper seeks to shed light on positive outcomes when family-based care is prioritized.

UNICEF’s 2020 Annual Report underscores how 2020 was a year like no other. School closures, increased vulnerability to abuse, mental health strains and loss of access to vital services have hurt children deeply. But not all children have been affected equally. The pandemic has exposed deep inequalities that have existed for too long, with the worst consequences on children in the poorest countries and communities and those already disadvantaged.

Reflecting on 2020’s unique experience, the report features:

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and its partners support the strengthening or establishment of comprehensive child protection systems, which includes providing individual children at risk with targeted, timely, systematic and coordinated support in their best interests. These Guidelines focus on this crucial element of the UNHCR child protection mandate.

This guide reflects and builds on experiences from the IFRC Reference Centre for Psychosocial Support with conducting its participatory on-line mental health and psychosocial support trainings. The guide offers tools on how to transform participatory and scenario-based face-to-face trainings to a digitally inclusive experience. It is written to encourage the use of online trainings that enhances the learning outcomes for participants combining technical skills with social-emotional learning.

Institutionalization of children who are deprived of parental care is a thriving phenomenon in the global South, and has generated considerable concern both nationally and internationally, in the last two decades. In Kenya, the number of children growing up in live-in care institutions has been growing ever since the country’s early post-independence years.

This document features key messages including critical information about keeping children safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. The content addresses the psychosocial concerns and increased child protection risks that can occur as a result of measures put in place to prevent the spread and negative impact of COVID-19. The messages are designed for use by country child protection actors, such as public child protection officers, directors of residential care facilities and government and civil society actors that work with vulnerable children and families.

This Facilitator’s Guide is for use by the varied workshop facilitators, including national and county trainer of trainers from the Department of Children's Services, and trained staff from other care reform partners. This guide is to be used together with the training agenda, PowerPoint slides, the Caseworker’s Guidebook and the Caseworker’s Toolkit for reintegration toolkit and the small group activity handouts. 

This toolkit is intended as a job aid for case worker's and includes sample forms for assessment, consent, placement and monitoring. The development of this Guidebook has been largely informed by the National Child Protection Case Management and Referral Pathway Guidelines in Kenya, the Guidelines for the Alternative Family Care of Children in Kenya, the case management model developed by 4Children [Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children] Uganda’s Keeping Children in Healthy and Protective Families project and the MWENDO [Making Well-Informed Efforts to Nurture Disadvantaged Orphans &

This Guidebook is intended to help in determining the course of action, streamline the process, and standardize the way state and non-state service providers promote family- and community-based care and protection for children outside of parental care. The intention in developing this package is to provide a general framework of agreed principles, considerations, steps, and procedures, along with a vital road map for effective case management that leads to successful reintegration of children back into families or communities. 

The government of Kenya is committed to moving away from institutional care towards family and community-based care. To support the oversight and implementation of the contents of the Children’s Act, Kenya has established the National Council for Children’s Services (NCCS) as the policy-making, coordination, regulatory, advocacy and advisory body and the Department of Children’s Services (DCS) the mandated government body to implement children’s services, including care.

Child welfare professionals have a deep and often quiet impact on children’s lives—working to connect families with resources, determining appropriate placements, and responding around the clock to address emergencies. The complex story of child welfare work is hard to convey to the community; while most people can describe the careers of professionals with whom they interact—police officers or nurses, for example—the day-to-day efforts of child welfare professionals are often invisible from public view.

This helpdesk report reviews 10 national social protection strategies (published between 2011- 2019) in order to map their content, scope, development processes and measures of success. Each strategy was strongly shaped by its local context (e.g. how social development was defined, development priorities and existing capacity and resources) but there were also many observed similarities (e.g. shared values, visions for social protection). A number of good practices were identified from the strategies and wider literature.

The paper outlines the primary and secondary impacts of COVID-19 on children in Ghana. The paper finds that wide-reaching secondary effects of the virus and consequent mitigation and preventive measures should be addressed in multidimensional ways, across sectors. In addition to emergency relief, strengthening social protection systems and prioritizing child-sensitive spending on human capital development, particularly on children’s learning through school reopening, are forward-looking strategies to protect children from this and future crises.

This report offers recommendations for strengthening child-sensitive reception, care and services for unaccompanied children in the United States. Drawing on UNICEF’s global experience, international guidance, and the insights of key stakeholders, the report intends to offer a constructive, solutions-oriented vision for addressing the challenges related to child-sensitive reception and care within the U.S. The report highlights the important features that make a reception and care system for unaccompanied migrant children child-sensitive: an organizational culture centered around child righ

This guidance is designed to strengthen the capacity of government agencies in low resource settings to prepare a sound budgetary framework for policies, programs and services that aim to keep children in safe and nurturing family environments.

Facing challenges of delivering parenting programs during COVID-19, many programs shifted to virtual service delivery and adapted to provide enhanced psychosocial support. This brief focuses on how parenting programs are reorienting their services in response to COVID-19 and supporting the workforce delivering these critical services.