Child Protection

Breaking the intergenerational poverty trap is key to South Africa getting back on track, securing the development of its children, and for fulfilling its commitment to realise children’s rights. To achieve this, government must adopt and implement a developmental child care and protection system that empowers families and caregivers to provide nurturing care to secure their children’s development.

Realising this right requires an effective, developmental child care and protection system that supports environments that protect children from the risk of violence and abuse; that prevents them from becoming victims. It requires an effective national child-care and protection system that addresses the structural challenges of inequality and poverty that impact families and their ability to care for and protect children, as well as a strong systems to ensure the protection and reintegration of children who fall victim to violence.

Goals

Every child in SA, documented or undocumented including children with disabilities, is protected from all forms of violence.

This requires that South Africa adopts and implements an effective developmental child care and protection system that addresses the challenges that impact on the ability of families to care for and protect children, as well as ensure the protection and reintegration of children who fall victim to violence.

Therefore, the goal of is to strengthen the systematisation, and in so doing, the implementation of the developmental child care and protection system provided for in the National Child Care and Protection Policy.

Objectives

Strengthen the systemic implementation of the Child Care and Protection Policy to ensure availability and access to quality services to protect all children from violence.

Secure increased human and financial resources to secure promotive and preventative services, reduce the need for statutory protection services and ensure quality statutory services are available to all who need them.

Strategic Interventions

Our child protection objectives and goal will be pursued through the following strategic activities:

Amplifying the voice of civil society organizations working in the child care and protection sector in South Africa for effective change.
Build and contribute to the body of effective evidence-based community child protection initiatives and advocate for their scaling up to protect all children in need.
Advocate for an effective national child protection system with adequate financial and skilled human resources to prevent and respond to violence against children.
Advocate for increased and strategic resourcing of services for the protection of children from all forms of violence.