8/13/2019 ICS Factfolder ChildProtectionAfrica DEF HR
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ICS (Investing in Children andtheir Societies) strives towardsa
better future for children inrural Africa and Asia. Through
itsprojects and programs, it builds
on a sustainable growth in welfare and wellbeing
by simultaneously investing in economic and socialopportunities
and needs. The central building blocksof the work of ICS are social
business, child protectionand skillful parenting.
Child Protection strategy
ICS stands up for childrens rights and overall child
wellbeing. Parents are the main duty bearers to provide
care and protection for their children. When rights of
children do get violated, children and parents need
to have access to services that intervene and provide
assistance. The government has the main responsibility
to ensure this access. ICS supports the provision,
coordination and sustainability of these services
Our focus is on a systems approach with a focus
on prevention. The systems approach focuses on
strengthening national child protection systemss and notfocus on
single topics. It works within the framework of
the law, policies, procedures and guidelines. It aims to
address prevention of and response to protection risks
and violations (abuse, neglect and exploitation). Within
the systems one ministry or department is responsible to
coordinate and interact with other government and non-
government actors in a multi-sector approach.
For ICS, the Child Protection strategy has a number
of focus points (figure 1):
Child Protection as government responsibility- Government is
ultimately responsible for the
provision of quality child protection services to all
children, civil society has a role to play in supporting
government to realise their responsibility and to
provide children and parents with avenues to voice
their opinions and monitor government progress. Systemss
Approach to Child Protection services - ICS
supports a systems approach to Child Protection;
seeing it as a coordinated effort between social
services like education, health care, judicial support,
child protection, skilful parenting and sharing and
learning platforms for children and youths.
CHILD PROTECTION AFRICA
Prevention focus Through skillful parenting, ICSfocuses on
prevention rather than in reactive services.
Rights Based and Cultural Specic- ICS sees thatchildren have a
basic right to protection and care
but the services providing child protection should be
adapted to the specific culture.
Quality services- ICS supports services to reach astandardized
quality. This means that in collaboration
with government, we invest in building capacity of
various actors and in development of standardized
operational guidelines for actors in the child
protection system and systems for monitoring and
documentation.
Sustainable Child Protection Services- ICS believesthat child
protection services need to be financially
longer term sustainable and is researching
possibilities to ensure this through social business,
Public Private Partnerships and insurance schemes.
Child Protection strategy- principles
The role and responsibility of government toprovide both
statutory and non-statutory guidanceand coordination of child
protection work isaffirmed by the guidelines. The CPS
guidelineswill therefore support government,
practitioners,communities and families to each play their partwhile
being accountable to each other.Ahmed Hussein, Director of Children
Servives (Kenya)
How our systems approach works
The goal of the ICS child protection program is to
promote the wellbeing of children in Kenya and Tanzania
through prevention of child rights violations and quality
child protection services.
ICS Child Protection West Kenya
ICS invests in the implementation of the National
Framework for Child Protection with a systemss appraoch
in Busia County, West Kenya. A project group of 5
partner organizations work together to realize access to
child protection services for all children in Busia County.
Partners in this project are the National Departmentof Childrens
Services and the Busia County Childrens
Services, CLAN, KAACR, Childline Kenya and REEP. To
date, ICS has coordinated a process of development of
the County Child Protection Systems Guidelines.
All children and theirfamilies have access toquality child
protection
services
Targeting
all children andtheir families inICS programme
areas
Qualityservices
Systemsapproach
and focus on
prevention
Sustainableservices
Government
Community& families
Civil society
uInvestsuBuilds capacity
uCoordinates process
The project activities are:1. Coordination:Build capacity of
child protection actors
and formalize coordination structures; development
and implementation of data management, referral
and case management, quality control procedures
and mechanisms.
2. Prevention:Implement the skillful parentingprogramme through
organizing parent peer groups,
training of parent facilitators, development of
additional parenting modules and information
materials for parents and caregivers.
3. Response:Organize front line child protection servicesat
community level and specialized services as part of
the child protection systems; Research on mandatory
reporting and criminalization of neglect.
4. Best Practices:Participatory monitoring of the
project;Research on best practices and dissemination in
Kenya and in Tanzania and within the international
community.
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