Everywhere, children experience separation from their families. Often, it can be prevented.
The separation violates every child’s right to be cared for in a family environment. It carries detrimental long-term consequences on the child’s development and well-being. Despite efforts to develop national child and social protection systems including measures to support families, family separation keeps affecting millions of children worldwide.
SOS Children's Villages and partners from 10 academic institutions from around the world have researched the phenomenon of child-family separation and what can be done to prevent it. The research tries to fill a global gap of information regarding middle and low-income countries, the contexts of which are not well understood.
The research adopts a child-centred approach to value the lived experiences and voices of the children and families impacted by separation that are largely missing in current studies.
The research explores:
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The drivers of child-family separation
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The situation of children affected by it
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Gaps in multi-sectoral and multi-level responses to prevent and address child-family separation