Child Protection Project
The work in the sector of child protection started with the amendment of the Child Law. Therefore, in 2012, 28 community committees include 420 members, were established as child protection committees in Assiut Governorate. The main roles of these committees are to support, monitor, refer, and follow up children at risk (including FGM cases). And act to end the violence against them and carry out follow-up visits to children. These committees were formed as a result of the absence of the role of child protection sub-committees that were supposed to be activated in Assiut. The formation of the community committees is a necessity for ensuring the good quality of the interventions at the local level as well as activating the role of the general committee and sub-committee in order to monitor, refer and act with children at risk through child protection committees and service providers in Assiut. This will be achieved through involving specialized technical units of the child protection sub-committees to ensure that the governmental partners contribute an active role in addressing the situations of the children who need care and protection.
They also responsible for identifying cases that need protection from violence, neglect and abuse by setting a framework for dealing with cases at the governorate level in cooperation with counterparts from NGOs and other government bodies.
Child protection units were established to overcome the shortage of the number of the employees who work full time and are responsible for managing cases to identify those at risk and to intervene to safe them. Without the availability of coordinators, social workers, and data entry, it is not possible to provide services for the most needy and vulnerable children. ACDA has become supportive of the protection system in Assiut and it works to activate it through the child protection unit.
ACDA’s Child Protection Unit that works on empowering protection sub-units in Assiut, Sohag, Qena and Aswan to play their role in protecting children at risk by managing cases properly sensitizing the community to reduce violence against children.
ACDA’s child protection unit adopted the implementation of community activities, through partnership with the CDAs and community leaders, to reach the largest number of the community members for raising their awareness and change their wrong practices as well as carrying out training workshops for children to develop their thinking skills
Moreover, the unit implements
- Awareness activities at Assiut University to prevent children from being exposed to violence, as the university students are the coming parents.
- Carrying out capacity building activities for the Members of the child protection units to teach them the basic professional principles they should consider during managing cases, identify and monitor the children at risk as well as setting the intervention plan for the cases.
- Raising awareness of children’s rights and the international conventions, such as the amended Child Law, the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Child Protection Policy.
