AMECEA/CCC: Child Safeguarding Standards Required in Institutions to Avert Risks
Sr. Niluka Perera, Mr. George Thuku and Dr. Ronald Luwangula
By Rose Achiego Ande
As the child care and safeguarding discussions continues in Nairobi, Kenya, it emerges that standards are required in institutions to avert risk.
According to one of the presenters Ronald Luwangula from Uganda, there is a likelihood of doing harm to children consciously or unconsciously while providing care and owing to their innocence and friendly nature. Besides “care is often inappropriately provided due to children-caregiver ratio, change of staff, shifts among other factors.
Luwangula said some of the safeguarding concerns include deprivation of family life and parental care, broken bonds among siblings, identity crisis, sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment by staff or older children against young ones, teenage pregnancy, physical, emotional and economic abuse. child labour, disruption of schooling and school dropout and physical injuries.
He also highlighted potential sources of child safeguarding risks to be the “absence of child safeguarding policies and procedures in place, Church activities that require child caregivers to spend long hours away from home, unsupervised activities involving children, children of different ages living or sleeping in the same space, school tour trips that require children to return late,” he listed these among others.
Luwangula says roles of child safeguarding focal persons should be to support child safeguarding risk assessment, keeping the child safeguarding risk register, inducting training for staff and associates on child safeguarding and child protection, developing relevant child safeguarding procedures, activities and educational materials, mapping out and establishing partnerships with local authorities and other child rights actors and monitoring compliance with safe guarding standards to ensure total child protection.
He also encourages care givers to; “conducting child safeguarding audits, maintaining records of cases of child safeguarding, guide on cases handled internally and those subject to referral to public authorities like the police, probation and social welfare officer, make reparations and maintain a safe guarding implementation plan.
The presenter said sound child safeguarding mechanisms are necessary for achieving the care reform goals hence safeguarding mechanisms must be deliberate and well communicated to all. “Safeguarding is not a preserve of senior management or safeguarding focal persons but every staff, volunteer and associate.”
Meanwhile, AMECEA Child Safeguarding Officer George Thuku emphasized the need for child safeguarding standers to protect children, persons working with children and organizations that have direct contact with children.
Thuku reported that in AMECEA region, seven out of eight conferences have safeguarding policies and desks with the Kenya Conference of Catholic of Bishops (KCCB) being one of them.
