CRINMAIL 1184

In this issue:

 
Editorial: Toolkit to support child care professionals

This week's editorial has been contributed by the Better Care Network to launch their new toolkit supporting child care professionals around the globe.

Introduction: children in need of care globally

Worldwide, the impacts of illness, conflict, poverty, and lack of access to basic services put increasing pressure on the family structure and the ability of parents to care for their children. All too frequently, these stressors lead to family separation, whether temporarily or permanently. In most cultures, families rely on extended family and community support mechanisms to provide additional assistance, often in the form of kinship care and informal foster care. Where these supports do not exist or are not promoted, many children find themselves without family care altogether.

Estimates indicate that there are between two and eight million children living in residential care worldwide (ref. 1), a figure that most child care experts consider quite conservative given the incomplete data on children without parental care and the high number of unregistered residential care facilities worldwide.

Children living outside of family care face particular risks, including social and economic exclusion; violence, abuse, and exploitation; and insufficient access to the emotional and developmental support they require. For those children whose family cannot offer them a protective home, a range of other interim or long-term care options must be found. Yet out-of-home care has frequently been developed without any regulation, monitoring, or standards. Unfortunately, many governments do not have the capacity to do this, and systems in place to ensure the best interests of children are currently upheld by the community-based organisations, national and international NGOs, private sector actors, and faith-based organisations.

International guidelines on care

In recognition of the urgent need to appropriately care for and protect children who are without adequate family care, on 20 November 2009, the UN General Assembly welcomed the Guidelines for Alternative Care for Children by full consensus (ref. 2). The first of their kind, the international guidelines call upon States Parties to ensure that children do not find themselves placed in alternative care unnecessarily, and that, where out-of-home care is provided, it is provided in appropriate conditions and responds to the child's rights, needs, and best interests.

The obvious call of these guidelines is for the creation of a protective legislative framework to ensure the appropriate care and protection of children. The manifestation of this is contingent upon a host of factors - collaboration across key actors, institutional support from States Parties, and increased fiscal space for care provision at national levels. Most notably though, the development, professionalisation, and expansion of the social welfare workforce -particularly child care workers, can serve as the protective mechanism to ensure the implementation of the Guidelines.

The essential role of social workers in care provision

Children living in alternative care arrangements require deliberate and committed case management and planning to ensure their protection, development, and general well-being. From prevention of family separation to the provision of alternative care arrangements and reunification of families, trained and capable child care professionals are the essential agents.

However, child care practitioners, particularly in low resource settings, face increasing challenges in providing appropriate care and protection services to children, youth, and families. The social workers and child care practitioners charged with the task of care provision are frequently overburdened, minimally resourced, and lack appropriate training and support. On the ground, they are often unable to access much-needed resources to assist them in their day-to-day work. In order to strengthen the social welfare workforce, efforts are necessary to disseminate clear, concise documents on how to assess and provide quality out-of-home care for children worldwide.

Better Care Network Toolkit

To support the needs of child care practitioners, the Better Care Network (BCN) developed the Better Care Network Toolkit to present, among other things, practical tools on how to prevent unnecessary family separation and support families and communities to develop better care alternatives when separation is inevitable.

The BCN Toolkit is for social work and community professionals and paraprofessionals; trainers of staff and caregivers working with children; caregivers and those working in care settings; children and young people in care; and policy level staff in government or non-governmental organisations who are in a position to influence policy development and resource allocation for children who require alternative care.

The BCN Toolkit has been developed to support practitioners and policymakers around the world in planning for and delivering better care for children, including family strengthening and out-of-home placement. It contains a selection of practical guides and manuals, chosen as examples of good practices and for their global relevance particularly for low resource settings. These guides cover the types of policies required to support a quality care system and provide practice guidance and tools for the delivery of alternative care.

The BCN Toolkit is now available as a 'Practitioner's Portal' on the BCN website: http://bettercaretoolkit.org/bcn/toolkit/. To support toolkit users, the toolkit website includes a toolkit guide, glossary of key terms, and advanced search function.

For more information

The Better Care Network (BCN), an interagency network facilitating global information exchange on the issue of children without adequate family care, was formed in 2005. The BCN is guided by BCN Steering Committee and administered by a two-person Secretariat at UNICEF Headquarters. As part of its core mandate to facilitate global information exchange, in 2006 the BCN launched its website (www.bettercarenetwork.org). The website library contains over 700 research, theoretical, and policy documents directly related to the care and protection of vulnerable children.

For information regarding BCN and the BCN Toolkit or to receive BCN's bi-monthly email newsletter, contact the BCN Secretariat, gkeshavarzian@unicef.org.

References

1 UNICEF estimates that more than two million children are in institutional care around the world, UNICEF, Progress for Children: A Report Card on Child Protection: Number 8, September 2009, p. 19. Save the Children and others estimate that the figure is closer to 8 million. Save the Children, Keeping Children out of Harmful Institutions: Why we should be investing in family-based care, Save the Children UK: London. November 2009. See also Pinheiro, P. "Report of the independent expert for the United Nations study on violence against children," August 29, 2006.

2 Resolution adopted by the General Assembly, Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children.
 

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LATEST NEWS AND REPORTS

Getting strategic

CRC elections: As elections for new members of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child draw near, now is the time for NGOs to do what they can to make sure that the next members measure up to the job and that no region is left unrepresented. Full details in our CRC CRINMAIL.

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Time warp

Ukraine: Children's rights NGOs in Ukraine have called on the Prime Minister to scrap an order which they say would undo progress made in reforming the country's system for children without parental care.

The order sets out a plan for reviving and developing residential institutions for children in the country. It further requests local governments to encourage low-income families to send their children to study in residential institutions in a move that would penalise poverty.

"The State shouldn't support an outdated and entrenched system inherited from Soviet times which is more convenient for warehousing children rather than caring for them or finding families for children," said EveryChild in a statement.

EveryChild is organising an advocacy campaign with Hope and Homes for Children and other Ukrainian NGOs to prevent the order from coming into force on 1 September 2010.

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Domino effect?

Brazil: President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has sent a bill to Congress which would ban the use of corporal punishment on children, including smacking by parents and guardians. Lula explained that he felt fortunate that his mother had never raised her hand to any of her children. The bill must be approved by both houses of Congress before it passes into law. Read the full story.

If the bill becomes law, Brazil would join Uruguay, Venezuela and Costa Rica in the ranks of Latin American countries which have banned all forms of corporal punishment. In March last year, the Inter-American Court of Human Rights confirmed the human rights obligations of Member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) to prohibit and eliminate all corporal punishment of children.

Bangladesh: The High Court in Bangladesh has ordered the government to ban corporal punishment in schools.

The ruling comes after a 10-year-old boy, who had allegedly been beaten by his teacher, committed suicide. Read the full story.

Comic: The Legal Assistance Centre in Namibia has published an illustrated guide on alternatives to corporal punishment as well as a poster factsheet on the issue. Find previous comics on children's rights issues released by the Centre here.


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Rooting out stigma

International AIDS Conference: From the 18th to 23rd July this year, the city of Vienna plays host to this year's International AIDS Conference. The event takes place every two years and is the biggest gathering of scientific, community and government leaders, UN agencies, donors and the general public committed to finding solutions to end the pandemic.

For more information on children's participation, visit the youth website. More in next week's CRINMAIL.

Eastern Europe and Central Asia: An underground HIV epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia is intensifying at an alarming pace, fuelled by drug use, high-risk sexual behaviour and high levels of social stigma that discourage people from seeking prevention information and treatment, according to a report, " Blame and Banishment: The underground HIV epidemic affecting children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia" , released by UNICEF.

In Romania, hundreds of personal carers for adults and children with disabilities and HIV and AIDS in Constanta County have lost their jobs as a result of the economic crisis, reports Reuters. The measure threatens to push more children with disabilities or HIV and AIDS into institutions.  Read the full story.

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Owning up

Kazakhstan: Migrant tobacco workers in Kazakhstan have been cheated and exploited, and some trapped into forced labour, Human Rights Watch said in a report released this month.

The report documents frequent use of child labour, with children as young as 10 working on farms.

The farm owners contract with and supply tobacco leaf to Philip Morris Kazakhstan, a subsidiary of Philip Morris International, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world.

Following the report's release, a spokesperson for Philip Morris International stated: "No one should work in unsafe or unlawful conditions."

The company said it has strengthened contracts with farmers to prohibit certain labour practices and set standards for workers. It announced, in addition, its intention to use third-party monitoring of farms.

Iraqi Kurdistan: A religious edict by the Kurdistan Islamic Scholars Union on female genital mutilation (FGM) sends a clear signal that the practice is not prescribed by Islam, says Human Rights Watch. The edict, however, does not call for an outright ban on this harmful traditional practice. Read the full story.

Islamic scholars in Mauritania also issued a fatwa against FGM earlier this year.

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Latin America: turning its gaze to children's rights

Inter-American Commission: The Commission concluded its 139th session last week. The session was not public, which meant that no hearings were held.

However, the Commission did examine a number of individual complaints and relayed one children's rights case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. The case concerns the forced disappearance of children between 1981 and 1983 by members of the military who conducted “counterinsurgency operations” in the context of the armed conflict in the country. Read the full story.

The Commission's next session will take place from 20 October to 5 November 2010. The deadline for requesting hearings is 31 August.

World Bank: The 2010 Human Opportunity Report for Latin America and the Caribbean, "Do our children have a chance?", focuses on children's equality of opportunity in the region.

The Human Opportunity Index measures how personal circumstances (birthplace, wealth, race and gender) impact a child’s probability of accessing the services that are necessary to succeed in life (timely education, running water and connection to electricity). Download the report.

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Employment: UNICEF - World Vision UK

UNICEF: Facilitator

UNICEF is seeking an individual to facilitate a two-day training at
Headquarters in New York on the rights of persons with disabilities
(tentative dates 5-6 October 2010).

For more information, visit: http://www.unicef.org/about/employ/index_54315.html

Application deadline: 2 August 2010

World Vision: Child health manager

World Vision UK is seeking an individual to develop and lead the organisation's strategy on child health in line with its global health and nutrition strategy and interventions. 

For more information, visit: http://worldvisionuk.easycruit.com/vacancy/436526/65719?iso=gb

Application deadline: 13 August 2010

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Jargon of the week

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