All children and young people have a right to protection from violence, exploitation, neglect and abuse, however according to Unicef, over 40 million children under the age of 15 suffer from abuse and neglect. We believe that all children should have the opportunity to grow in environments that are safe and healthy, and that will help them to reach their full God-given potential.
It is a sad fact that voluntary and Christian organisations (including churches) are targeted by people wishing to harm children. And it is also true that many of these groups are unaware of the risks this poses to their staff, their organisational reputation, and most importantly to the children in the care. Therefore we believe it is important that training resources are made available for local organisations, to help them think through what it means for them to create safe, healthy environments for the beneficiaries of their projects.
In the box below there are resources which may be helpful to groups seeking to developing their own child protection policies, seeking to ensure that the children in their care are protected.
NEW! Keeping children safe tools
The Keeping Children Safe Coalition, of which Tearfund is a founder member, has developed a set of tools to help organisations working in developing countries to keep children safe.
The pack consists of 5 tools to help build a child safe organisation. These tools can be dowloaded in English, French, Portuguese and Arabic on Keeping Children Safe: A Toolkit for Child Protection
- Tool 1 Keeping Children Safe: Standards for Child Protection, a book which explains what the basic standards should be for all organisations working in child protection across the world
- Tool 2 Keeping Children Safe: How to Implement the Standards, a resource pack that provides guidance and activities to help you and your organisation meet those standards
- Tool 3 Keeping Children Safe: Training for Child Protection, a pack of flexible training exercises and materials to help you and your organisation train staff to meet the standards
- Tool 4 A DVD – to support and help with training
- Tool 5 A CD Rom – to support and help with training and implementation of standards. The CD Rom contains all the training materials, trainer notes, exercises, activities, sample forms and templates.