A Common Responsibility: The Role of Community-Based Child Protection Groups in Protecting Children from Sexual Abuse and Exploitation

This document from the International Save the Children Alliance discusses the need for community involvement in child protection even where protective services through governments and non-governmental organisations exist. Based on the organisation's work, it observes that communities do have the will and capacity to prevent and respond to abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence against children. It also found that children themselves can play a role, if community-based groups engage with, inform, and mobilise children, and ensure an active role for children in community efforts to keep children safe. The document describes good working practices to meet the challenges facing community-based child protection groups.

Children's participation may include: referring cases, highlighting new risks, or identifying vulnerable children; representing children in adult groups; receiving adult representatives in children’s groups; and joining with adults for advocacy and action for better service delivery, policy improvements, and effective implementation of laws and programmes for child protection. Awareness raising and community mobilisation are a part of prevention work among these groups, along with: increasing children's life skills; monitoring and "watch dogging"; supporting caregivers and extended kin networks around positive parenting practices; and supporting the community in livelihood, social protection, and education provision. Special attention may be needed for protecting and supporting migrant children, including: promoting understanding of why children move; raising awareness of unsafe and safe migration; promoting protective networks and acting as intermediaries with these networks; and monitoring migrant child safety in local communities. Communities have identified and monitored traffickers for prevention of abuse and abduction, sponsored prevention campaigns, and supported registration of migrants.

Good practices for developing sustainable and community-"owned" groups and ensuring that community-based child protection groups do no harm to the children that they aim to protect include:

• A gradual and sustained period of mobilisation that allows communities to build ownership of protection issues.
  
• The development of groups and attitudes that embed child participation in community protection.
  
• Facilitating community members to identify priority local protection issues and local solutions, as well as to map both vulnerable groups of families and children and local
  services and referral pathways, rather than suggesting or imposing them externally.
  
• Ensuring that staff who are mobilising communities around child protection are themselves well trained and know how to promote community empowerment, rather than their own organisation’s priorities.
  
• Providing child protection background checks on all volunteers.
  
• Developing clear definitions of roles and responsibilities, including the limits for child protection groups.
  
• Providing close follow-up, coaching, and case review from trained agency staff to support community volunteers.
  
• Ensuring regular monitoring, including self-monitoring by committee members, external monitoring, and dialogue and consultation with children on the performance of the group.

Some key learning points from this review of how best to support community-based child protection groups include the following:

• “The selection of community volunteers is important for promoting diversity, rather than reinforcing discrimination. Careful selection and ongoing monitoring is required.
  
• Children’s participation is vital for effective community response, but needs specific attention. Ensuring that children and adults are adequately prepared for children’s participation is essential to make it safe and meaningful.
  
• Community-based child protection groups should be integrated into a national child protection system where it exists, and not become a parallel structure. Adequate resources and government commitment are required to make these links effective.
  
• ...There is an urgent need for robust evaluation of the potential long-term impact of community-based approaches to protection, given the investment already made and the potential for scaling up and replication.”