Think-Tanks'Press

It is increasingly clear that maternal mental health is one of the most crucial determinants of a child’s mental health – which in turn suggests that if we want to improve the emotional health of children in this country we should be focusing on families, not individuals.

Given the fundamental importance of maternal mental health to the health of children and families, we need to be actively seeking answers to these questions, as well as thinking about how to integrate maternal mental health into child health programmes.

The increase in awareness and recognition of the importance of mental health is welcome, but there needs to be a policy shift to reflect the mountain of evidence showing that the key determinants of health lie outside of the health care system.

Across the world today, there are more vulnerable migrants on the move than ever before.

For far too many, this is a journey of necessity, not of choice.

Some are driven from their homes by conflict or persecution, while others are desperate to escape environmental catastrophe or extreme poverty.

This report presents the true picture of this phenomenon.

It examines the dynamics of migration within the four regions at the heart of today’s migration crisis: sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia.

Between them, these four regions comprise the countries of origin of more than two-thirds of the world’s migrants, over two-thirds of the world’s refugees, and 92% of the world’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs).

Given its growing importance, SSC has generated diverse interest and debate within the larger development discourse.

The main concern centred on the lack of a systematic framework to account for and compare SSC experiences and interventions.

While there is resistance by Southern providers to adopting the traditional, North-centric approach to defining and accounting for development cooperation, there is emerging consensus on the need for a consistent, systematic approach to reporting on SSC.

At present, solutions to development problems learned in each SSC experience are mostly considered unique cases.

Overall, this situation hinders the scaling up of SSC and derails potential benefits from innovations that could increase impact for sustainable development.