The UK relief and development sector
Keeping Children Safe is working with the UK Department for International Development (DfID) to promote and assess safeguarding standards in the relief and development sector. Thirty-two of DFID’s biggest partner organisations will be assessed using DfID standards for Prevention of Sexual Exploitation, Abuse and Harassment (PSEAH) and the KCS International Child Safeguarding Standards to ensure that the specific needs of children are not overlooked. The objective is to gain a deep understanding of safeguarding measures within each organisation and provide actionable recommendations to keep people safe.
Protecting Children from harm
Many organisations in the Western Balkans that provide direct services to children are still not sufficiently aware of the importance of building child safeguarding measures into their work. The Trag Foundation is based in Belgrade, Serbia, and is an intermediary partner of the OAK Foundation, which is implementing the Issues Affecting Women Programme (IAWP) across the region. One of the requirements of the IAWP programme is to build the capacities of grantee partners, such as the Trag Foundation, to develop and implement stronger child safeguarding policies and procedures.
KCS delivered “train the trainer” workshops for the Trag Foundation to support and mentor designated trainers to enable them to confidently deliver training for grantees/partners and prepare them for developing robust child safeguarding measures.
The Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation’s Experience
The Pestalozzi Children’s Foundation (PCF) is a Swiss non-profit organisation, which works worldwide. They seek to provide children and youth with access to quality education and to strengthen their intercultural competencies.
PCF finalised its Child Safeguarding policy in 2017 and, one year later, appointed two Child Safeguarding Focal Points who were trained by Keeping Children Safe. PCF has also revised its complaints policy to include specific topics on child safeguarding and has similarly updated its monitoring, quality and risk management guidelines.
PCF has requested that KCS work with them to deliver child safeguarding workshops for its staff in 12 countries and also with its operational partners to enable them to develop their own policies and procedures. KCS will also carry out training-of-trainers workshops with its Education Officers and further training on policy implementation for the Child Safeguarding focal points of its operational partners. KCS has also trained PCF Child Safeguarding focal points at the organisation’s head office, supporting them in the assessment process for gaining Level 1 KCS certification to meet international child safeguarding standards.
We are here to help
If your organisation works for and with children, then it is high time to check if you have put rigorous child safeguarding measures in place – starting from the top of the organisation, right down to your field staff and outside suppliers. Prevention, after all, is better than lives destroyed because of abuse.
If you have already used our free self-assessment tool, and would like to discuss details of the results with a team member, do get in touch as soon as possible.
