Child Protection
"The Child Protection Programme is a core sector of our work. We utilize a child rights programming framework and keep in mind the cross-cutting themes of child participation, non-discrimination and best interests of children."
Our child protection work focuses on three key “evidence” groups:
- Children affected by disasters/emergencies and conflict, including Disaster Risk Reduction.
- Exploitation & child trafficking.
- Children in the worst forms of labour and children with inadequate parental care including alternatives to institutional care.
- Understanding good and best practices in care and protection is a major focus of our programme work. This requires quality monitoring and evaluation (research & studies) in order to identify good practices in documentation and sharing of this evidence.
Some of the most important activities of our Child Protection programme include:
- Improving the understanding of the situation of vulnerable children in need of care and protection.
- Building children’s resilience and supporting their participation in their own protection, including child-led organisations and child-to-child support.
- Promoting diversion from inappropriate or punitive responses and encouraging the reintegration of children who have been stigmatised because of their coping strategies in the absence of effective protection mechanisms.
- Demonstrating the benefits of preventative approaches and early intervention over interventions at a later stage.
- Supporting the development of community-based care and protection systems.
- Support to the co-ordination and integration of services and support to vulnerable children.
- Encouraging moves away from services directed towards particular problems towards services addressed to supporting the functioning and coping strategies of children and families.
- Building the care and protection of children into broader social welfare, poverty reduction and other national development strategies.
- Building the capacity of duty bearers to deliver effective care and protection.
- Advocating for legal and policy reform in line with the principles and standards of the Child Rights For Change and other relevant international and regional instruments.