BCN Newsletter: 1 October 2013 

 

 

Welcome to the latest edition of the BCN Newsletter! 

 

 

In this edition, we highlight recent research, tools and policy briefs relevant to children's care, including:

  • Syria: A new child protection assessment by the inter-agency Child Protection Working Group, with findings on separation and the impact of the conflict on caregivers.
  • The Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children presents her report to the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly, in which she highlights the need to prevent the institutionalisation of children under 3.
  • A major global conference took place in New Delhi, India, in November 2012 entitled The Better Way to Protect ALL Children: The Theory and Practice of Child Protection System, with important learning about placing children's care at the heart of child protection systems.
  • A newly published article takes a social justice perspective on Intercountry Adoption in the USA and addresses the responsibility of social workers in that context.
  • Azerbaijan: A paper that looks at education reforms in the context of the State's Program of Deinstitutionalisation.
  • An anthropologist reviews research on 'orphans' in Sub-Sahara Africa and calls for a different approach to understand the contexts in which children and their families live.

Also, 

  • China and India are coming up in front of the Committee on the Rights of the Child: we highlight the information provided by the governments of those countries on children's care in their reports.

And of course, we have the latest news, upcoming events, conferences, webinars and job opportunities! Questions? You can reach us at [email protected]. Thank you for your continual subscription and partnership in promoting positive and appropriate alternative care options for children!

  

All the best,

The BCN Secretariat

 

IN THIS ISSUE
Syria: Child Protection Assessment
SRSG on Violence against Children Report to the UN General Assembly
New Delhi Child Protection Systems Conference
USA: Social Justice and Intercountry Adoptions
Azerbaijan: Educational Reform and Prevention of Vulnerability
Orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa
China and India: Reports under the CRC
In the Media: India, Iran, and the USA
Events
Consultancy and Job Postings
General Information
IN A FEW WORDS:

"The United States adopts more children internationally, but also domestically, than the rest of the world combined." "The good, the bad and the ugly all play out here in bigger ways than they do elsewhere simply because the process is older and more developed here, for better or for worse."

 

Adam Pertman, Executive Director of the Donaldson Adoption Institute, CNN 19 September 2013

 

 

 SYRIA: Child Protection Assessment 2013

 

This report just issued by the Child Protection Working Group (CPWG) presents the main findings of an interagency child protection assessment for Syria, covering the period February- May 2013. Due to restricted humanitarian access inside Syria, a remote methodology was used comprising three components: a desk review of existing Syria literature; resource person interviews with newly arriving refugees; and humanitarian worker interviews. Information gathered through the assessment clearly indicates that children are being separated from their usual caregivers as a result of the conflict, and that there is a growing caseload of both separated and unaccompanied children. Many caregivers do not register changes in care arrangements with local authorities, possibly owing to the predominance of informal kinship care arrangements and the fear of sharing information in the current context. Analyses of trends reported in other assessments conducted in surrounding refugee-receiving countries found separation was initiated in Syria for a range of reasons, including safety, access to services, economic reasons, prevention of recruitment into armed forces and armed groups, and to protect girls from sexual assault. 

 

In the current assessment, 74% of respondents reported that there were separated children as a result of the conflict, 40% of respondents reported there were unaccompanied childrenMost respondents (57%) were aware of families who had sent children out of Syria with an unrelated person or without any adult care, and cited their motivations as safety (91%), economic hardship (39%), avoidance of being used by armed forces and armed groups (48%). The majority of children separated from their parents live in kinship care arrangements in the community, with communities reporting relatively high capacity to support at community level, corroborating the pre-conflict cultural norm. The reports suggest that deteriorating economic situation may adversely impact this positive community response.  Care related recommendations include, ensuring that any potential unintended risks that could be caused through the provision of humanitarian aid is mitigated, including incentivizing separation from caregivers by the provision of special benefits of assistance to families; addressing household economic vulnerability that may lead to child protection concerns, including separation, and targeting support to households whose structure has changed, for example due to death, disappearance, injury or displacement (including single-parent, elderly, person with disability, households caring for additional children and child-headed households).

 

To access the full report, please visit:

http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=31814&themeID=1004&topicID=1026

 

  

Annual Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence against Children 

 

In her report to the 68th Session of the UN General Assembly, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Marta Santos Pais, highlights the progress achieved and lessons learnt in the implementation of the strategic recommendations of the United Nations study on violence against children and highlights her priorities for the second term of her mandate. The UN Study on VAC recognized that early childhood is a fundamental stage in children's development, and offers a strategic opportunity to prevent violence and break the cycle of abuse affecting children. In that context SRSG convened an important expert consultation on violence in early childhood in August 2012, in cooperation with the Government of Peru, the Bernard van Leer Foundation, UNICEF and the Global Movement for Children in Latin America and the Caribbean. The meeting highlighted, among other things, the urgency of supporting families and caregivers in their child-rearing responsibilities and securing a responsive national child protection system to strengthen families' capacity to raise young children in safe environments and prevent child abandonment and placement in residential care, with special attention to young children at risk.

 

The report highlights in that context the Call to Action issued by UNICEF Regional Offices for Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia and for Latin America and the Caribbean to prevent the separation of children under age 3 from their families and to end children's placement in institutional care. The initiative recognizes that placement in residential care has a detrimental impact on the health, physical and cognitive development and emotional security of very young people; and recommends five core interventions:

    • Legislative changes and strict conditions for placement in institutional care, which should be a last resort.
    • Allocation of resources to support vulnerable families and promote family-based services to prevent the separation from their families of children under age 3, and provide special attention to children with disabilities.
    • Capacity-building and standards of practice for child protection actors involved with children at risk of being deprived of their families.
    • Information and sensitization campaigns to promote social inclusion of children deprived of parental care and children with disabilities.
    • Mechanisms for monitoring the conditions of, and responses to, children deprived of family care. 

To access the full report, please visit:

http://www.bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=31824&themeID=1002&topicID=1017

  

CONFERENCE REPORT

A Better Way to Protect ALL Children: The Theory and Practice of Child Protection Systems 

 

In November 2012, more than 130 policymakers, academics, practitioners and other experts committed to CP systems from 50 countries met in New Delhi over four days for a major conference co-hosted by four organisations - UNICEF, UNHCR, Save the Children and World Vision. The report from the conference encapsulates the substantive content of the presentations and related discussion; provides an analysis and documents the journey; and suggest an agenda, or at least direction, for future work on CP systems.  The conference participants discussed the definition and boundaries of a child protection system and a typology was proposed to facilitate discussion about the objectives and performance of such systems and inform the choices made about the way in which a particular system develops.  The development of child protection systems across regions was explored, with learning from High, Middle and Low Income countries presented through country case studies. The importance of 'system thinking' to guide child protection system strengthening was highlighted, providing a more multidimensional and complex concept of CP systems and their many elements, based on a good understanding of how systems change happens. Many of the presentations addressed the importance of intervening early in the life of the child through the provision of services and support to the child and his/her family, as well as of the need to make prevention a priority. Five round-table sessions explored ways in which specific groups of children with particular needs may be addressed within a systems framework, including one on children without parental care. Among many other speakers:

  • Fred Wulczyn, Senior Research Fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago, presented on his work assembling data on children in out-of-home care, including work focused on understanding how the supply and demand for beds in residential settings impact the placement of children, specifically to understand if residential placements are in fact driven by supply rather than need.
  • Rebecca Davis, Professor and Director of the Center for International Social Work at Rutgers University, suggested that prevention approaches should be related to the context, and provided learning from Romania and work to prevent institutionalisation in that country.
  • Armando Barrientos, Professor and Research Director at the Brooks World Poverty Institute, University of Manchester, explored in more depth the connection between social protection and child protection, and highlighted the tension between individual rights and family agency, noting that it is important to consider how we engage families.
  • Alexander Krueger, Director and Co-founder of Child Frontiers, highlighted the benefits and risks of using issues as entry points to strengthen CP systems and how work on a specific issue, like alternative care, has provided opportunities to engage with a population, gather data, garner political support and raise funds, and in this way has also served as a catalyst.
  • Anna Feuchtwang, Chief Executive of EveryChild, shared a model for placing care at the heart of CP systems and highlighted how childcare reform can act as an impetus for broader change - whilst failure to address children's care has a major impact not only on children's current well-being, but also on their ability to contribute to societies as adults.
  • Gwen Burchell, Director of United Aid for Azerbaijan (UAFA), presented a case study on how children with disabilities have been prioritised in child protection reform in Azerbaijan, and how her organization is working to address among other things a lack of care providers, and a failure to prioritise children with disabilities in de-institutionalisation efforts.
  • Dilli Guragai, Senior Adviser, Save the Children Nepal, presented on Safe Communities, a Save the Children initiative to protect children in jeopardy in Nepal (2009- 2011), that includes a component on preventing children from being separated from their parents and reintegrating children from institutional care to parental/ community-based care;

To view the report and for information about the website that includes full documentation from the conference, please visit:

 http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=31840&themeID=1001&topicID=1010

 

 

Social Justice and Intercountry Adoptions: 

The Role of the U.S. Social Work Community

 

Using social justice as the conceptual foundation, the authors present the structural barriers to socially just intercountry adoptions (ICAs) that can exploit and oppress vulnerable children and families participating in ICAs. They argue that such practices threaten the integrity of social work practice in that arena and the survival of ICA as a placement option. Government structures, disparity of power between countries and families on both sides, perceptions regarding poverty, cultural incompetence, misconceptions about orphans and orphanages, lack of knowledge about the impact of institution-based care, and the profit motive are driving forces behind the growing shadow of unethical ICAs. The authors discuss evidence of fraudulent and coercive practices in the context of ICA in Cambodia, Guatemala, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Honduras, the Marshall Islands and Samoa, and argue that this has played a major role in the 62 percent decrease in the number of children arriving in the United States through ICA from 2004 to 2012, rather than difficulties in the implementation of the 1993 Hague Convention on the Protection of Children and Co-operation in Respect of Intercountry Adoption. They suggest that the structure of the process in the United States, whereby ICA is facilitated by licensed private agencies and accredited organizations operating on fees that are paid by prospective adoptive parents (PAPs), creates a demand driven orientation that increases the vulnerability of children and families in countries of origin. These parents and families may be pulled into the ICA process without full knowledge of the implications of access to alternative social services. The authors also highlight the role of ICA in the proliferation of residential care for children in some countries, with the institutions acting as "holding centers for children recruited for ICA and as fundraising venues."

 

The authors argue that the U.S. social work community has a large role and responsibility in addressing these concerns as the United States receives the most children adopted through ICAs of all receiving countries. In addition to the centrality of social justice as a core value of the profession, the responsibility to carry out ethical and socially just ICA has recently increased as a matter of law, under the implementation legislation to the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. While acknowledging that these issues are complex, the authors provide suggestions for corrective policy and practice measures. 

 

To access the abstract and full article, please visit:

http://www.bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=31823&themeID=1002&topicID=1014

 

Azerbaijan: Educational Reform and Prevention of Vulnerability

 

 

This paper from the Centre for Social Policy Development, United Aid for Azerbaijan (UAFA) presents an examination of the linkages between education and the deinstitutionalization of children in AzerbaijanThe Government of Azerbaijan has enacted a number of State Programmes related to Inclusive Education, DeInstitutionalization and Economic Development.  The author argues that these commitments urgently need a coordinated and strategic vision in order to succeed. The paper explores the role of education in social policy and its interplay with economic policy. According to the author, the link between educational reform as a means to support the prevention of family separation and institutionalization has been neglected. Children from deprived family backgrounds, isolated due to poverty, location and disability, are the typical residents of the State's residential institutions, the majority of which come under the responsibility of the Ministry of Education. Whilst much of the political attention has been given to the development of some alternative services such as community-based rehabilitation, fostering and small group homes, the issue of educational reform to support prevention has been neglected, most likely due to lack of understanding of the complexity of inter-related problems facing vulnerable populations.

 

This neglect of preventative mechanisms only serves to increase likelihood of inequality and segregation for children from socially disadvantaged groups.  The author also reviews several papers which explores the links between the perception of social problems and those that lead to institutionalization. Taking an epistemological approach, she concludes that the challenges faced in implementation of the State Programme relate to the public's knowledge and understanding of the problems faced by vulnerable children and their families as well as the public's understanding of the solutions to those problems, both within the responsible State bodies and in wider society. She suggests that a society which places the fault of institutionalization upon the parents when there are inadequate social safety nets and exclusive education systems in place is a society which needs increased awareness about the role that Ministries are playing in addressing these problems, and why these are problems which affect everyone in society, regardless of wealth or social position.

 

To view the full paper, please use the following link: http://www.bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=31534&themeID=1002&topicID=1017

 

 

Orphans in Sub-Saharan Africa: The Crisis, the Interventions, and the Anthropologist 

 

In this paper, the author argues that the response to the orphan crisis in sub-Saharan Africa has focused mainly on mobilizing and distributing material resources to households with orphans. Only a few anthropologists have interrogated the frameworks and values on which the projects for orphans are based. The paper provides an analysis of the trends in foster-care research in Africa and suggests that current ethnographic data on foster-care practices do not adequately reflect the changing context of fostering in that continent. In particular, the measures employed in these studies and surveys are mostly " Eurocentric" but also "adultcentric" and exclude children's perspectives. The author examines briefly fostering research in Africa, identifying knowledge gaps in four major themes: (1) external partners and local community collaboration for orphans; (2) older women, men, and orphan care; (3) context of orphan caregiving and research, and (4) measuring orphan care.  

 

The author suggests that orphans are often portrayed as a monolithic group, evenly affected by fostering practices, and that the "obsession with specific variables of what must be provided for orphans has not yielded a holistic understanding of the situation of fostered orphans. While individual needs like schooling may be important, it is more pertinent that we understand orphans' needs and priorities from their perspectives and not for these needs to be based on some external imaginings. Any attempt to categorize and identify the needs of orphans must consider relevant social and demographic factors, such as geographical location, age, gender, kinship ties, and household economy."  It is only when new data are generated that effective and culturally sensitive programs for orphans and the people who are directly responsible for their well-being can be developed. The paper concludes that to improve the lives of orphans and their households, African social scientists, and anthropologists in particular, should fill the knowledge gaps in fostering research and programs. Researchers have to engage foster parents, orphans, and other community members directly through multiple methods to elicit their subjective narratives. This approach can complement current adultcentric and quantitative bias in indicator research and provide context for interpreting the statistics. It will help to generate more reliable, context-focused data, and evaluate the household and community factors that affect orphans.

 

To access the abstract or download the full article, please visit:

http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details.asp?id=31813&themeID=1002&topicID=1012

 

 

 COUNTRY CARE REVIEWS

CHINA and INDIA: Care related sections of their reports to the CRC

As we await the adoption of the Concluding Observations on the reports of States examined in the 64th session of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, we focus on the reports of 4 major countries coming up in front of the Committee that together are home to an astonishing 42% of the world's population, with important implications for children's care. In this issue we highlight some of the information provided by China and India in their reports, with a focus on sections addressing Family Environment and Alternative Care. In our next issue, we will look at Indonesia and the Russian Federation. 
  • The People's Republic of China has submitted its third and fourth combined report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which was examined by the Committee on the Rights of the Child during the current session, on the 26 and 27th September in Geneva.
To access highlights of the sections relevant to care and read the extracted sections in full, please visit:
  • India has submitted its third and fourth combined report on the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child which is due to be examined by the Committee on the Rights of the Child at its 66th Session, taking place in May-June 2014 in Geneva.  

To access highlights of the sections relevant to care and read the extracted sections in full, please visit:

  

 

IN THE MEDIA

 

  

India's Women: The Mixed Truth, The New York Review of Books, October 10, 2013.

 

In this article for the New York Review of Books, the Nobel Prize economist Amartya Sen discusses India's response to the gang rape of a young medical student in Delhi and the complex reality of entrenched gender inequality that underlies violence against women. Sen also highlights the role that "boy preference" has in outcomes for girls, including higher mortality rates of girls compared with boys, "not because girls are killed, but mainly because of the quiet violence of the neglect of their health and illness in comparison with the attention that male children receive."

 

Sen explores why, despite growing life expectancy for women in many countries including India and China, the proportion of "missing women" in the total population has not declined in those countries. He highlights the role that "natality discrimination" (the selective abortion of female fetuses due to social-cultural preferences for boys) plays and the evidence from data on female-male birth ratio that shows striking regional variations within India. On that basis he argues that there is a dividing line cutting India into two halves, with clear evidence of the use of sex-selective abortion in the north and west of India, compared to the east and south of the country. Sen discusses the importance of women and girl's education and its role in increasing their power to influence decisions about their lives, including in terms of child bearing and caring. He also calls on further research to better understand the complex reasons behind the striking regional variations within India, and for more political and social discussions about "boy preference", as well as commitment by India's political mainstream to address the issues central to gender inequality.

 
To read the full article, please visit:

 

Iran lawmakers pass bill allowing men to marry adopted daughters, The Guardian, 26 September 2013.

 

This article in the Guardian newspaper reports on a new bill passed by parliamentarians in Iran that includes a clause that allows a man to marry his adopted daughter and while she is as young as 13 years. Activists and experts inside and outside of Iran have expressed their alarm at the proposal, which has not yet received the backing of Iran's Guardian Council, a body of clerics and jurists that vets all parliamentary bills before the constitution and the Islamic law.

 

The article quotes Shiva Dolatabadi, head of Iran's society for protecting children's rights, who warned that the bill implies that the parliament is legalising incest. "You cannot open a way in which the role of a father or a mother can be mixed with that of an spouse". Girls in the Islamic republic can marry as young as 13 provided they have the permission of their father. Boys can marry after the age of 15. Marrying stepchildren, however, was forbidden under any circumstances under the law.

The Guardian reports that the bill has prompted backlash in Iran with the reformist newspaper, Shargh, publishing an article warning about its consequences. "How can someone be looking after you and at the same time be your husband?" the article asked.


To read the full article, please visit:


Effects of child abuse can last a lifetime: Watch the 'still face' experiment to see why, Washington Post, 16 September 2013.

 

This Washington Post article discusses the findings from the National Academy of Science's first major report on child abuse and neglect that found that advances in brain research now show that child abuse and neglect damages not only in the way a developing child's brain functions, but changes the actual structure of the brain itself, in such a way that makes clear thinking, controlling emotions and impulses and forming healthy social relationships more difficult.

 

This article features a link to a video of an experiment conducted by a professor of psychology at the University of Massachusetts, called the "still face experiment", in which a parent interact at first normally with their infant and suddenly stops doing so for a period of 2 minutes, staring at the infant with a still face. The video records the reaction by the infant. The article reports that recent studies have found that four-month-old infants exposed to the "still face" will remember it two weeks later, rapidly showing physiological changes to negative responses that infants exposed to it for the first time do not. It discusses the implications of the experiment and the findings from the National Academy of Science's research and links to studies of infants at orphanages who are fed and clothed, but not held, talked to or played with have found that some neglected children, literally, fail to grow. 

 

To read the full article, please visit:

http://www.bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details_news.asp?id=31819&themeID=1003&topicID=1024

  

There has been a flurry of news articles and reports on the use of Inter-country Adoption in the US over the last few weeks. We highlight two investigative reports: 

 

International adoptions in decline as number of orphans grows, CNN, 17 September 2013.

 

In a series of articles looking at different sides of the debate on the use of Inter-country adoption in the US, CNN hears from families, children and experts on its decline and whether the trend could -or should- be reversed.  After decades of steady growth, the number of international adoptions in the US has dropped nearly 50% since 2004, despite the well-publicized explosion of adoptions from China in the 1990s, and high-profile adoptions by celebrities such as Angelina Jolie from Cambodia and Madonna from Malawi. The number of children finding new homes in the United States -- the number one location for adopting children -- fell to 8,668 in 2012 after peaking at 22,884 in 2004, according to U.S. State Department statistics.  Some advocates of ICA argue that it is due to rising regulations and growing reluctance by countries such as Russia and China to send children for adoption abroad. With the growing forces of globalization, "why wouldn't this be expanding?" said Elizabeth Bartholet, professor of law and director of the Child Advocacy Program at Harvard Law School, a proponent of international adoption who adopted two boy from Peru in the 1980s. 

 

In May, Ghana became the latest country to suspend international adoptions, according to the U.S. State Department. It joins Bhutan, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Rwanda as states that have closed their doors. South Korea plans to phase out international adoption, and adoptions to the United States from Nepal have effectively stopped. Other experts point out that the closures are a result of concerns that the children are not, in fact, orphans. Many of the top sending countries to the United States in the last 15 years, like Guatemala, Nepal and Vietnam have halted or suspended adoptions because of serious concerns about kidnapping and corruption."There is an inherent naivety about international adoption that it does an absolute good, but it is inherently a high-risk venture," said David Smolin, a law professor at Samford University in Alabama, who adopted a pair of children from India in 1998 only to discover that they were stolen from their mother. "To not recognize that in the face of the evidence is almost criminal." The CNN articles also explore the views of young adults who were adopted as children, including U.S. Korean adoptees who are leading the fight to end ICA from that country. It also highlights a little known fact that overseas adoption is rising for one group, U.S. children. Over the past decade the number of U.S. children adopted by foreign parents has been steadily rising -- and almost all of the children are of African American descent.

 

To access the full series of articles, please visit:

 http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details_news.asp?ID=31829&themeID=1002&topicID=1014

 

The Child Exchange: Inside America's Underground Market for Adopted Children, Reuters, 9 September 2013.

 

This series of articles by Reuters investigates the disturbing practice of 'private re-homing' of adopted children in the USA, particularly affecting children adopted from overseas. 'Re-homing' also called 'adoption disruption' refers to adoptive parents abandoning their children and handing them out to other adults, often found through internet and social media group,  without any type of formal vetting or procedures. The first article tells the story of Quita, a teenage girl adopted from Liberia by American parents who decided to give her up as a result of what they described as her difficult behavior, and who found her new parents to take her in less than two days by posting an ad on the internet. Quita was left in the care of a woman whose biological children had been taken away by child welfare authorities years earlier due to findings of "severe psychiatric problems as well as violent tendencies". 
 
Reuters's investigation of 5 years of activities through a Yahoo "adoption group" set up to advertise children or to look for new children, found that the majority of children 're-homed' were aged 6 to 14 years old, the youngest was 10 months old, and had been adopted from abroad- from countries such as Russia, China, Ethiopia and UkraineThe five part series looks at the network and lack of supervision that makes 'private re-homing' possible, the dangers including stories of child sex abusers taking children home through this process, the middlemen who facilitates this process, the failure of the laws and authorities to regulate and prevent the practice, and the children and young adults who are the survivors.  

To access the full series of articles, please visit:

http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details_news.asp?ID=31822&themeID=1002&topicID=1014

  

  

EVENTS

 

  

 Strengthening Social Service Systems through Cross-Sectoral Collaboration 

 

The Global Social Service Workforce Alliance is continuing its Webinar Series with a two part series on Strengthening Social Service Systems through Cross-Sectoral Collaboration. The first of two webinars will be focused on Multidisciplinary Teams in Communities and Local Health Facilities and will take place on Tuesday 15 October, 2013, at 8:30 EDT-10:00 am EDT. 

 

To care for vulnerable families, social service workers are often called on to address a variety of needs and rights, such as health care, economic strengthening, psychosocial support, education and advocacy within the judicial system. Providing such care for families usually requires social service workers to engage with workers from multiple disciplines, such as doctors, nurses, community health workers, local government officials, police, judges and teachers. During this webinar, we will hear accounts from two colleagues involved in facilitating multi-disciplinary teams in communities and at local health facilities.  They will discuss strategies and challenges of scaling up this team approach model and ways in which coordination can lead to better care and support for vulnerable families. 

 

The speakers will be:

  • Lynette Mudekunye, Advisor, REPSSI.
  • Dr. Bernadette Madrid, Director, Child Protection Unit, Philippine General Hospital and Lecturer, University of the Philippines.
For more information about the webinar and how to access it, please visit:

  

6th Milestones of a Global Campaign for Violence Prevention Meeting

 

The 6th Milestones in a Global Campaign for Violence Prevention Meeting takes place on November 13th-14th, 2013 in Mexico City.  The meeting series is a way to recognize the achievements of the Global Campaign for Violence Prevention since the launch of the World Report on Violence and Health in 2002 and identify challenges and future priorities in violence prevention. The theme of the 6th Milestones Meeting is "Towards Measurable Violence Prevention Targets". The scope includes child maltreatment; youth violence; intimate partner violence; sexual violence, and elder maltreatment. It will focus on consolidating global, regional and national efforts to strengthen the measurement of violence and violence prevention policies, programmes and laws, with a view to defining measurable violence prevention targets in the years ahead. The meeting will be held in English and Spanish and some 350 participants are expected to attend.

 

The program for the event and more details can be found at:  http://www.who.int/violence_injury_prevention/violence/6th_milestones_meeting/en/index.html

 

 

The 13th Australasian Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect 

 

Organised by the Australian Institute of Criminology, the Conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia from the 10th to 13th of November 2013. The theme 'Protecting children: New solutions to old problems' reflects the need to innovate and to enhance responses to key policy and practice issues across the sectors involved in preventing and managing child abuse and neglect.

 

The conference will consider a diverse range of areas including:

  • child protection service responses;
  • policing and the courts;
  • prevention of child abuse and neglect;
  • professional practice issues;
  • health and welfare therapeutic interventions;
  • emerging issues in child abuse and neglect, and
  • whole of system reform.

The program for the event and more details can be found at: 

https://www.etouches.com/ehome/accan2013/home/

 

 

CONSULTANCY AND JOB POSTINGS

  

Save the Children: Technical Assistance Consultancy for the Development of Alternative Care System for Children Without Appropriate Care (CWAC) in Liberia

 

Save the Children is seeking qualified consultant(s) to work with the Department of Social Welfare (DSW) of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare (MOHSW) of Liberia to review and provide guidance and recommendations on DSW policies, procedures and activities in support of its mandate for the identification, processing, placement, and monitoring of Children Without Appropriate Care (CWAC) into alternative care. 

 

Proposed start date: November 1, 2013

Duration of assignment:  Up to 134 person days. Depending upon the configuration of the team contracted for this assignment, the proposed timeframe for this activity is over a period of no less than two, and no more than six months.

Location: Monrovia with travel to at least three counties outside of the capital.

 

Application deadline: October 7, 2013 

 

For the full terms of reference and the information about the application process, please visit:

http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/details_news.asp?id=31746&themeID=1001&topicID=1010

  

 

UNICEF Child Protection Specialist, P-4, Amman.

 

Purpose of the position

  • Accountable for the establishment, and support of the functioning, of the country-specific monitoring and reporting mechanisms (MRM) on grave violations against children (CAAC) in Syria, and for  receiving, compiling and analyzing information received from the Country Offices (COs) concerned (Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq) in close cooperation with Syria CO, and to transmit information to the Task Force (TF) in Damascus. 
  • Promote partnership with the Syria CO and the TF/MRM, the Child Protection in Emergencies (CPiE) and Emergency (EMOPS) teams both at Regional Office (RO) and HQ, and the SRSG/CAAC's office.
  • Contribute to the work of the Syria Hub insofar as the child protection (CP) response is concerned, by assisting both COs concerned and the RO CP team, including with respect to advocacy on child protection and children's rights issues.

Duty Station: Amman, Jordan

Contract type: Long-term Staff (FT)

 For more information about qualifications needed and how to apply, please visit:

http://bettercarenetwork.org/BCN/JobBoard.asp

 

Application Closes on the 7th October 2013 

 

GENERAL INFORMATION

 

The newsletter participants, currently 3,375 in total, are working on issues related to the care and support of vulnerable children across Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas.  The purpose of the newsletter is to enable members to exchange information on matters of mutual concern. If you would like to share a document, raise a specific issue, or reach out in any other way to the Network, please send the information to us at [email protected].  In the interest of keeping messages consolidated, we will manage announcements on the newsletter and send out a few messages each month.

 

We would like to involve as many people as possible who are concerned with better care issues in the Network. Please advise anyone who would like to be added to the newsletter to send us a message at [email protected] with"newsletter request" in the subject line. Alternatively, visit the homepage of the Better Care Network website at http://www.bettercarenetwork.org and click on the upper right box where it says, "click here to sign up for our email announcements." Thank you.