The Department launched a consultation on the use of independent and semi-independent children's care settings that are not required to register with Ofsted (unregulated provision) as a matter of urgency, ahead of the Government’s anticipated wider care review. This report presents the key findings from an independent analysis of responses to the consultation.

Based on analysis of legal documents on family reunification and educational material concerning transnational adoption in Denmark, this article suggests that the concept of attachment may be conceptualized as a specific operationalization of belonging, and that belonging and biopower may be viewed as intertwined (rather than opposites).

This webinar event launched the report 'The digital divide: The impact on the rights of care leavers in Scotland,' which shares the findings of a focused piece of research that sought to understand care leavers' experiences of digital exclusion before and during the COVID-19 restrictions in Scotland in 2020.

"Councils have called for financial oversight of England’s privately-run children’s care homes after research showed some of the biggest private equity-owned providers were collectively making hundreds of millions a year in profits," according to this article from the Guardian.

In this study, Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used to analyse eight semi-structured interviews with black and minority ethnic (BAME) care-leavers about their experience of identity development.

"A new free legal advice clinic for children and young people in the care system commenced on Tuesday," says this article from the Irish Times.

This article from the Guardian tells the story of an adult adoptee, adopted from Chile to Sweden, whose search for her biological mother revealed that she had been "stolen" from birth. The article describes how many women in Chile in the 1970s and 80s, mostly from poor and minority backgrounds, had been tricked or coerced into giving up their babies for international adoption, as part of a national strategy to eradicate childhood poverty which began during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

"There are calls for foster carers to be prioritised for vaccines as more families are needed to take emergency foster children during the pandemic," says this article from Sky News.

"The pandemic has had an adverse impact on all children. That has been more severe for those with special needs but an almost forgotten group of especially vulnerable children are those who experience abuse and neglect," says this Irish Times in this editorial. 

This article from the Irish Times calls attention to a new report from the Mother and Baby Homes Commission Investigation, highlighting how "thousands of Irish babies were put up for adoption for all the wrong reasons."