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Background
Plan is an international child-centred development organization. Plan’s vision is of a world in which all children realize their full potential in societies that respect people’s rights and dignity. Plan works in 66 countries across the world; in 51 developing countries across Africa, Asia and the Americas supported by fundraising in 23 countries and by 4 regional offices as well as Plan international headquarters in the UK.
Child Centred Community Development (CCCD) is Plan’s Child Rights approach, in which children, families and communities are active and leading participants in their own development. This approach recognizes the intrinsic link between poverty and rights, where poverty is both a cause and consequence of the denial of rights.
Plan has identified eight thematic impact areas in which it can effectively contribute to the realisation of child rights by applying its CCCD approach and these areas include the right to protection and to participate as citizens. Child protection received an additional attention as one of the two global priorities for Plan, the other being education.
For more information visit www.plan-international.org
Increasing focus on child protection
Over the last decade, momentum has been steadily increasing to recognise the importance of child abuse as a phenomenon of concern, and to direct actions towards both preventing and responding to violations of children’s rights to be protected from all forms of violence in all settings. At the global level, commitments have been made by governments to undertake wide-ranging measures and to create and strengthen integrated systems to prevent, address and combat violence against children in its numerous forms. Simultaneously, at national and regional levels organisations and communities, including children themselves, have joined efforts to end abuse and harm children are exposed to in different settings.
As a part of holistic approach to child protection, it is essential to involve children in the process. Listening to children should be the starting point for identifying and addressing child protection risks and issues that affect them; additional support is extended to children to develop their skills to recognise violence inherent risks and contribute to addressing variety of protection issues to the best of their capacities.
Plan International has assumed an active role in empowering children in their own protection and also providing support and continues to contribute to the international processes which are shaping and influencing the emerging global child protection agenda. This particular initiative is contributing to strengthening child protection systems overall, and further invigorating implementation of the Plan ARO regional thematic sub-strategy on child protection.
Scope and levels of child protection in Plan International
Within Plan, the current scope of child protection covers the following areas of interventions:
Internal implementation of Plan’s Child Protection Policy ”Say ‘Yes!’ to
Keeping Children Safe”;
External work on child protection with communities, authorities and other partners at the community level through programmes, advocacy and other activities, also known as Child Protection Programming;
Child Protection in Humanitarian Context – including Disaster Risk Management and Child Protection in Emergencies, aiming to ensure comprehensive preparedness and response to natural or man-made disasters.
As a community based organization having extensive interactions with children’s organisations, civil society groups and other multi-level stakeholders, one of the key areas of Plan’s child protection interventions revolves around empowering children and developing their capacities to participate in their own protection. Increasing efforts are channelled into strengthening different actions along these lines while also aiming at creating protective networks and environments expected to ensure protection of all children.
Purpose
Violence against children is transpiring across the Region in all settings: in families, schools, communities, on the streets, in institutions of residential care or in the workplace. Much violence still remains hidden and under-reported, which further contributes towards its perpetuation and impunity. Children are not able to report acts of violence fearing retribution by their abusers and due to the lack of independent, child sensitive and safe reporting mechanisms at the country level. Plan ARO’s regional thematic strategy on child protection highlights the need to advocate for "fully functional child protection systems”. Child sensitive reporting mechanism is one of the components of the child protection system.
The main purpose of shaping this reporting mechanism is to establish simple and user-friendly process, through which children and their peers and families can easily raise child protection concerns and report to the respective mandatory child protective agencies and services, or trusted community group/institution/persons, including Plan. This mechanism will also provide source of information and identify services to prevent and respond any form of violence against children in all settings.
KEY CONSIDERATIONS:
The following are the key considerations regarding the key components and features of child sensitive reporting mechanism, as well as supporting processes essential to provide adequate response and follow-up:
I The child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to be guided by the principle of the best interest of the child in all its components and stages of the related process. This should ensure that different perspectives by various service providers need to be given due consideration, including the child’s own opinion in line with the evolving capacities. Throughout the process, the do-no-harm approach should be consistently applied and continuum of care and protection duly ensured.
II Ensuring participation of children in the development of the mechanism: it is important that development of the mechanisms sees different stakeholders, especially girls and boys, involved and consulted. The mechanism should consider gender, age, different abilities and evolving capacities, easy access including language accessibility, level of literacy, ethnicity or any other factors that may affect children’s ability to report safely and confidentially.
III The child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to be safe: children should have confidence that reporting of the incident of alleged abuse will not have any negative consequences for themselves. Children must feel safe and be able to report without any fear. The process initiated by the reporting mechanism should also respect the views of the children and what they say must be taken seriously.
This will also imply careful selection of personnel who will be responsible for receiving the reports, so that they ensure that children’s fears are minimized. . If the reporting is in person, then the reception must be welcoming for children.
In addition, the organizations who are receiving reports from children should be encouraged to adopt child protection policies, so that risks to children from the services providers’ inappropriate response are reduced. This should be communicated to children prior to and at the time that they come in contact with service providers.
IV The child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to be confidential: the mechanism needs to ensure that any reporting of an alleged case of abuse will be received in confidence, regardless of how serious or grave the alleged abuse might be. The mechanism needs to ensure that the information about children and reported alleged case of abuse are stored in a safe way and are not accessible to anyone who is not involved.
The premises where children meet with service providers needs to ensure privacy and ideally should be child friendly. This aspect should also be highlighted at the time that children come into contact with either the CBCPM or the services.
V The child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to be transparent: the mechanism should ensure transparency and the response services need to have a mechanism which will ensure the decisions taken are transparent and guided by the best interest of the child concerned. All relevant options need to be shared with the child and the family/guardians and how these may impact both the child and their family. The services must be transparent and communicate what is within their mandate and power in terms of response to the reported case of alleged abuse.
VI The child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to be accessible: the mechanism needs to be accessible for both girls and boys and all efforts should be made to ensure it can also be used by other marginalized groups including children with disabilities. The mechanism should consider a broad range of reporting channels including toll-free helpline numbers, access through landline and mobile phones, complaint/suggestion boxes etc.
The mechanism needs to consider all the accessibility specific aspects including gender, age, different ability, language, level of literacy, ethnicity, access to phones or any other factors that may affect children’s ability to have an easy and direct access to reporting.
In addition, the mechanism should be promoted through different media so that ALL children are aware of the child sensitive reporting mechanism and response services. In order to cater for vulnerable groups, including children living and/or working on the street or children without parental care, this information should be available in areas most frequented by the respective groups of children.
VII The child sensitive reporting mechanism should be timely: it is essential that the child sensitive reporting mechanism encourages timely action and response so to reduce further risk and/or address the immediate needs of the child (including removing the child from the abusive situation or environment, health assistance, psychosocial counseling, legal support etc.) In addition, the related legal procedural requirements need to be followed in a timely manner.
The guidelines for the response to the reported cases need to indicate clearly the sequence of certain steps and actions to be taken to reduce further harm to children.
VIII Participation of children in decision making: children who are either at risk or have experienced or witnessed violence need to have the opportunity to participate according to their evolving capacities in the decisions concerning them. Decisions being should be based on the best interest of the child and ensure that these are communicated to the children in a way that they can understand.
IX Child sensitive investigation process: the child protective services need to have child sensitive investigation processes adopted, with the best interest of the child prioritized at all times, in response to the reported cases of alleged abuse. The relevant staff need to have specific skills for undertaking child sensitive investigations, received through regular training events. In addition, all stages of the investigation process need to be informed, developed and reviewed/revised to reflect children’s perspective and accommodate methods which do not inflict harm on children during the investigation process.
X Child sensitive referral services: child sensitive reporting mechanism should ensure immediate response from appropriate trustworthy child protective services. The updated service providers list should be included in guidelines accessible to children and their families to ensure timely action.
XI Follow-up to the reporting cases: child sensitive reporting mechanism should include follow-up action to the status of reported cases by related mandatory services so to ensure effective response.
XII Child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to be flexible and adaptable: the child sensitive reporting mechanism needs to include all the relevant components and stages of the process, while leaving space for customization to the local contexts and different situations and settings. It is therefore essential to ensure flexibility of the generic model/prototype, which will be easily adjusted to diverse realities, both in term of forms of violence prevalent and stages of development of the respective national child protection systems.
4. Overall Objective
The overall objective of this assignment is to produce a design layout and model for a generic child sensitive mechanism to report alleged cases of violence against children in different settings, which will be further modified and adapted for use through field pilot testing in selected countries.
5. Specific objectives
a. To design and produce a user-friendly interactive brochure outlining key steps in using the child sensitive reporting mechanisms for children of different age groups;
b. To design and produce an interactive model for the child sensitive reporting mechanism which will be used as a reporting box. The shape and visual identity will be informed by practice and inputs from the field, and based on the document which outlines key dimensions and steps in the process.
6. Specific Focus: specific focus will be given to practical applicability, inclusiveness and accessibility for children who are marginalized and excluded from the mainstream society.
7. Scope and limitations: development of child sensitive reporting mechanism will build on the existing and available similar processes, while focusing on children’s inputs on aspects to be prioritized. The child sensitive format developed will be piloted across the Asia Region by Country Offices in different settings, which goes beyond direct responsibilities defined under this ToR.
8. Process and proposed stages: the development of the above products to support utilisation of child sensitive reporting mechanisms is proposed to be carried out in the following phases:
I. Producing several draft options for the two products;
II. Children’s consultations: selected groups of children from a number of Asian countries will consulted on the proposed draft layouts to inform selection and finalisation of the brochure and model of child sensitive reporting mechanism;
III. Finalisation and production of the two products for application of the child sensitive reporting mechanisms: based on the findings and outcomes of the children’s consultations, draft models will be finalised and printed. The brochure should be pocket size and of robust material resistant to wear-and-tear (initial print-run 5.000 copies). The size of the model is subject to further exploration (initial print-run 5.000 copies).
IV. Piloting of the products in the selected countries across the Asia Region.
9. Consultant/expert agency
The consultant/expert agency should demonstrate the following expertise and skills:
Demonstrated technical expertise in producing child-friendly products and design layouts, particularly around involving children in their own protection;
Relevant working experience in Asian countries and thorough knowledge of the regional context and trends;
Sound organizational human resource capacities and financial liability;
Exceptional communications and creative skills and high proficiency in written and spoken English;
Previous successful working experience with Plan International or other child rights-based organizations.
10. Selection and award criteria
The following selection criteria will be applied to the selection process:
Professional capacity
Proof of enrolment in a professional or trade register, in country of establishment should be provided.
Technical capacity
The demonstrated track record of similar successful engagements should be provided.
11. Accountabilities and respective roles:
The Consultant/Expert agency will be responsible for:
Development of the relevant design layouts for the model mechanism;
Printing of the products;
Delivery to Plan Asia Regional Office
Ensuring the quality of the final products.
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