Strengthening Community-based Child Protection Referral Pathways: A resource manual

ChildFund has commissioned this manual as a guide for community groups to create and strengthen a Child Protection Referral System to put into practice the principles of a country’s existing laws, policies, and procedures. Strengthening a Child Protection Referral System, at its most fundamental, means that leaders and practitioners take a broad view of how, when and why they will intervene where a child’s safety is concerned and make the necessary decisions on how to act. When a community cannot prevent the cause of the concern, a decision must be made to seek help from others who may be better trained to take action when a concern is raised. In brief, this means that community leaders and child protection activists need to create alliances together and with others who may be better able to prevent escalation and ensure an appropriate response in order to protect all children.

The goal of this manual, then, is to support community groups to strengthen child protection systems by creating a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) that will define an approach and response mechanisms to coordinate between children, communities and support agents. An SOP creation process will help define roles, responsibilities and relationships between the different people involved in the system. It will also help recognize a need and make decisions on how to handle different child protection concerns. The SOP will give details of the process involved in each step of managing an abuse case, a process for working with children, and also provide a system for managing information that can assist communities in analyzing their own child protection patterns and needs. Specific activities in the SOP process will include establishing key roles, responsibilities, guiding principles, thresholds, and procedures for prevention of and response to protection issues. Thus, this manual will guide you through the process of strengthening your child protection system that is targeted specifically to your community, its needs, your own contacts, and your capacities. SOP creation is a process that involves consultation and deliberation with relevant actors from various sectors (health, social welfare, law enforcement, etc.) within a designated location. So, while each SOP creation experience will be unique to your location, all SOPs should promote cooperation, collaboration, and clarification across these networks through structured activities.