In 2020, the spread of a new virus, SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, started a pandemic, which affected basically all countries across the globe. Triggering the COVID-19 disease, it led to infections of more than 775 million persons in more than 220 countries and territories, causing the death of some seven million people. Emergency measures of unprecedented scale were taken by governments to contain the further expansion of the virus, including “lockdowns”, which severely restricted free movement of persons, disrupting family, social life and the economy. Not only public health care was placed under enormous stress, but also several other public services, including those targeting and relevant to children and families. At crucial stages of their personal developments, children were among those most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to data from UNICEF and UNESCO, it’s considered “the largest education crisis ever”, which concerned 90 % of all young learners worldwide at peak times, including full school closures for children for over 40 weeks in 1 in 10 countries within two years.2In 2020, the spread of a new virus, SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, started a pandemic, which affected basically all countries across the globe. Triggering the COVID-19 disease, it led to infections of more than 775 million persons in more than 220 countries and territories, causing the death of some seven million people.1 Emergency measures of unprecedented scale were taken by governments to contain the further expansion of the virus, including “lockdowns”, which severely restricted free movement of persons, disrupting family, social life and the economy. Not only public health care was placed under enormous stress, but also several other public services, including those targeting and relevant to children and families. At crucial stages of their personal developments, children were among those most severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. According to data from UNICEF and UNESCO, it’s considered “the largest education crisis ever”, which concerned 90 % of all young learners worldwide at peak times, including full school closures for children for over 40 weeks in 1 in 10 countries within two years.2While in May 2023 the WHO declared an end to COVID-19 as a public health emergency, not least thanks to the rapid development of vaccines effectively reducing the health risks and spread of the disease, its longer-term impact can still be felt across many segments of society. At the same time, partly parallel developments took place leading to what is now often called a polycrisis situation, especially in the European region, including the Russian war on Ukraine in February 2022, the high rise of energy costs and further inflation, with the impact of climate change further exacerbating challenges.With co-funding support from the European Commission CERV-Programme, project partners from Belgium (Defence for Children International/lead and DCI World Service Foundation as well as General Administration of Youth Welfare of the French-speaking community of Belgium), Croatia (Brave Phone) and Austria (Ludwig Boltzmann Institute of Fundamental and Human Rights), undertook research to assess the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic and ensuing crisis situations for the provision of child protection services for children and their families, in particular for children in vulnerable situations. This project, called CARES (Child-centered and Accessible crisis-Response for an Effective protection System), aims to:

• analyse the impact on children and families as well as responses of child protection services (including institutional care and cross-sectoral collaboration) to the challenges raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and further crisis situations,
• draw lessons learned, identify good practices and recommendations for policy makers and stakeholders from this experience, with particular attention to assessing and raising child rights awareness both of children and professionals engaged in child protection services and means for child participation,
• contribute to further capacity-building on child rights and child participation, based on the lessons learned from the research, and
• ensure dissemination of the outputs of the project at domestic and European levels, in order to further strengthen access to justice for children.

Following extensive consultations with children and adult professionals from the child protection sector, national country reports have been prepared by the partner research teams. Building on those domestic assessments, this final synthetic report was drafted to offer comparative perspectives and lessons learned for policy-makers and professionals. In this context, the report and the outcomes of the CARES project aim to contribute also to the implementation of the recent 2024 EC Recommendation calling on all EU Member States to “take effective, appropriate and proportionate measures to further develop and strengthen integrated child protection systems with the objective of protecting children from any form of violence”.