Currently, child protection reform is generally understood as a move from residential to family-based alternative care and a need to build strong gatekeeping mechanisms. Moreover, many see it as something that needs to happen ‘over there, in the global South’, because ‘over here’ the system works, it just needs some fine-tuning and minor improvements. In this fine-tuning, the increasing trend of adding on trauma-informed practices is seen as a breakthrough and major improvement (don’t get me wrong, I’m not disputing that this is certainly a lot better than not having them). I have come to view this very differently.
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How to Get Better Data
There is an increasing understanding of the essential need for data on children in vulnerable situations, including children on the move, children in alternative care, children without parental care, and children in poverty. The call for adequate data on the number of children in these situations and the support that is or is not available to them is growing day by day, from a variety of large international organisations – such as UNICEF, Lumos, Eurochild, Hope and Homes for Children and SOS Children’s Villages – as well as from people in academia. The more people start to become interested in data on children in vulnerable situations and start looking around for them, the more obvious it is that there is a serious lack in this area.
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