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:
- Allow for improvements in child protection programming.
- Demonstrate accountability.
- Gather lessons learned.
- Leverage funding/resources to upscale and to sustain the benefits delivered by the project.
- To inform the wider policy debate concerning the protection of children.
Evaluation questions aimed to assess:
- What impact did the project have on children in targeted communities being better protected from violence?
- 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?
- What impact did the project have on government systems and authorities being better informed about child protection interventions?
- How relevant were the SCSC project interventions for all project beneficiaries?
- 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