SCSC Endline Report: End of the project evaluation for Save the Children’s Safe Communities, Safe Children project in Papua New Guinea (2017-2021)

The project adopted Save the Children’s Parenting without Violence (PwV) Child Protection Common Approach. The PwV approach is designed to protect children from physical and humiliating punishment in the home/community, and improve positive parenting capacities of fathers, mothers, and caregivers. The project targeted children aged between 6-17 and worked with those responsible for protecting children. Gender equality and disability inclusion were integrated throughout the program to support equal responsibility for positive, non-discriminatory parenting by addressing harmful social and gender norms.

Objectives of the evaluation were to:

1. Allow for improvements in child protection programming.
2. Demonstrate accountability.
3. Gather lessons learned.
4. Leverage funding/resources to upscale and to sustain the benefits delivered by the project.
5. To inform the wider policy debate concerning the protection of children.

Evaluation questions aimed to assess:

1. What impact did the project have on children in targeted communities being better protected from violence?
2. What impact did the project have on community-based child protection systems working more effectively to provide improved access to services for girls and boys?
3. What impact did the project have on government systems and authorities being better informed about child protection interventions?
4. How relevant were the SCSC project interventions for all project beneficiaries?
5. How sustainable were the activities of the SCSC project?

The following tools/instruments were used to collect data:

Parent survey, Interactive Stories with Children, Focus Group Discussions with community leaders, Interviews with key informants.

Key findings include:

• Significant reduction in physical and verbal / emotional punishment in the home and increase in parents/caregivers knowledge of abuse and explaining wrong behaviour in ways that children can understand.
• Children feel significantly safer to communicate experiences of violence to family members after participating in the SCSC Parenting without Violence sessions.
• Both mothers and fathers gained in their understanding of positive discipline over the course of the SCSC project.
• Evidence suggests that many cases of child abuse still go unreported due to lack of trust in CP systems.

Key recommendations include:

• Address gender-based root causes of violence against children that fuels violence in the home, and measure changes in attitudes and behaviour on gender equality.
• Strengthen violence-free-homes messaging to protect children from not only experiencing violence, but from witnessing violence too.
• Advocate for an increase in funded social welfare officers (social workers, district/ provincial welfare officers)

Additional links

Link for SC staff Parenting-without-Violence-Learning-Week-June-2021