Standard 6: Children
Our Commitment:
We are committed to ensuring that
programmes are child-sensitive by
incorporating child development
and child protection in their design,
planning and implementation.
Children in Kasaba village,
Democratic Republic of Congo
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Standard 6: Children
The issues
Children in emergency situations are highly vulnerable and are often a major
beneficiary group in emergency relief projects. This vulnerability results from a
wide range of factors, such as lack of food and health care which leads to
malnutrition, a lack of access to education due to displacement and physical
damage to property, with the traumatic experiences they may have witnessed,
or separation from parents and loss of a stable environment. Large-scale
population displacement can lead to a break down in family and social
structures, moral norms and a lack of traditional protection systems. Hunger,
domestic violence, lack of access to educational facilities and no prospects of a
future are push factors for boys and girls to be on the streets. Children as young
as seven are taking part in hostilities around the world as child soldiers. They
are often abducted from schools and refugee camps or from their homes,
whether voluntarily, forced or induced through money or other incentives to
take part. Children are impressionable and easily manipulated and therefore can
end up acting without questioning, as has been seen in conflict in Sierra Leone,
Liberia, Sudan, Uganda, DRC and elsewhere.
Children develop in four main areas:
1) Physical Development - refers to the child’s body and growth.
2) Cognitive Development - what the child knows, understands or remembers.
3) Emotional Development - feelings, control over emotions, learning through
social interactions and cultural background.
4) Moral Development – knowing the difference between right and wrong,
influenced by culture, belief and faith.
When children do not get the right kind of input, and they grow up in an
environment where their needs and rights are not respected or fulfilled, then
their development will be affected and can be unbalanced.
Biblical foundations
The Bible teaches us that children are made in the image of God, children are a
blessing, and that boys and girls are equally valued by God. Adults are to care
for children in a loving and caring way, based on respect (Matthew 18:1-6,
19:13-15). Discipline is to be in the form of instruction and guidance in order
that children are then able to explore their environment within safe and healthy
boundaries. Jesus severely warns adults who misguide and sin against children
(Matthew 18:6-7).
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Standard 6: Children
Good Practice commitments
Our commitment is to meet both child development needs – strategies, which
support children’s wellbeing and development; and child protection needs –
policies that ensure their protection from abuse and exploitation.
We are committed to safeguarding children from all forms of physical or
psychological violence, injury or abuse, neglect, maltreatment or exploitation,
including sexual abuse. We are committed to ensuring that the child’s best
interest and well-being is at all times of paramount consideration. Tearfund is a
member of the Keeping Children Safe Coalition, setting the international
standard for child protection.
The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted in 1989 and summarised
on page 153, sets out the rights of children. The convention was unanimously
adopted by every country in the United Nations except Somalia and the USA
(Somalia and the new state of South Sudan are currently undergoing proceedings
to become parties to the treaty), meaning that countries have made a binding
promise to enforce these rights and ensuring the needs of children are met.
Close links to other Quality Standards
Our commitment on children has close links with:
 Values, as child abuse is incompatible with our values and standards of
conduct;
 Accountability, as we need to make information on our commitments to
children publicly available and our feedback from communities needs to
include feedback from children and feedback on any child protection
issues;
 Technical Quality, as we need to ensure that technical design is
appropriate for the needs of boys and girls;
 Gender, with our commitment to the development of both boys and girls;
 HIV, recognising the impact that HIV has on children.
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Standard 6: Children
Where to look for further information:
 Tearfund’s Child Protection Policy 2009
 Tearfund’s Safeguarding policy (on the Corporate Hub):
https://sites.google.com/a/tearfund.org/imagelibrary/policies/safeguarding
 Tearfund’s Roots Guide on Child Participation (TILZ):
http://tilz.tearfund.org/en/resources/publications/roots/child_participat
ion/
 Keeping Children Safe Coalition:
http://www.keepingchildrensafe.org.uk/about
 Keeping Children Safe Child Protection Training Pack (English, French,
Spanish, Arabic, Swahili, Portuguese): www.keepingchildrensafe.org.uk
 Children and Health: www.who.int
 Child Rights: www.crin.org; www.unicef.org
 Child Participation: http://www.iicrd.org/; www.plan-international.org
 Children and WATSAN: www.schools.watsan.net
 Education: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/about-us/what-wedo/education
 Children and DRR: www.unisdr.org; www.quakeschool.org
 Child trafficking: www.childtrafficking.com
 Children and the Environment: https://www.ids.ac.uk/project/childrenin-a-changing-climate
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Standard 6: Children
Practical Steps for carrying out our Children commitment
Identification
Step 1: Ensure assessments
gather the perspectives of
boys and girls
Design
Step 2: Design projects in a
way that is child-friendly
and supports child
development
Step 3: Design specific
project activities
appropriate for boys and
girls
Implementation
Step 4: Carry out child
protection commitments
Step 5: Monitor and
evaluate the impact of your
child development approach
and child protection policy
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Standard 6: Children
Step 1: Ensure assessments
gather the perspectives of
boys and girls
Boys and girls can be easily
overlooked when gathering views
from a community and designing
a project. A determined effort
will be needed to seek out their
views and opinions.
As with the Gender quality standard, it is important to carry out separate
discussions with similar age groups of boys and girls in order that they can speak
freely about their ideas, needs, capacities and vulnerabilities. Children have
their own ideas about what they want and they often know better than adults
about how things can and should improve for them. Children should feel safe to
raise their concerns and trust that their opinions will be taken into account
when decisions are made.
Questions should be open and age-appropriate to gauge the general situation for
children include: How old are they? Who do they live with (with other children?
family? institutions?) Do they access any education? Where do they go to when
they are unwell? Is there a safe place for children to play? What type of
environment are they in? Ask children who they consider are important people in
their lives. This may include their biological family, extended family, civil
society (which could include the local church or mosque, local NGOs, teachers
etc.), INGOs and others.
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Standard 6: Children
Step 2: Design projects in a
way that is child-friendly
and supports child
development
When designing your project consider the four
main ways that children develop, as explained
previously. In what ways are project activities
in general going to support these areas?
1) Physical Development e.g. nutrition support,
hygiene and health, protection from violence
and witnessing of violence.
2) Cognitive Development e.g. education, play,
and safety
3) Emotional Development e.g. a supportive environment, families kept
together, protection from neglect and emotional abuse, support to work through
the effects of being involved in something traumatic.
4) Moral Development e.g. having positive role models to look to as well as good
parenting skills such as praising good behaviour, explaining why bad behaviour is
wrong, etc.
Look at the design of each project sector in relation to these areas in order to
maximise the positive impact and avoid any negative impact on child
development.
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Standard 6: Children
Step 3: Design specific
project activities
appropriate for boys and
girls
There are many projects in emergencies
which are intended specifically for boys and
girls. It is also widely recognised that
children have the capacity to learn quickly
and to adopt new ideas and behaviours. For
example, hygiene promotion teaching has
often been adopted more quickly by
children than their parents, and they then become a positive role model for
positive hygiene behaviour in the home.
Full and meaningful child participation is essential for such projects, with both
boys and girls involved in the decision-making. Boys and girls should be
considered as partners in programme development rather than just passive
beneficiaries.
Child-focused projects in emergencies include:
 Child focused health: health-promotion clubs that meet in school or out of
school or both.
 Child-friendly spaces: an age-appropriate safe play area, with structured
activities in a safe and normalised environment.
 DRR in schools: sensitive teaching on the hazards of disasters (e.g.
earthquakes and cyclones) faced by the community and how to reduce their
impact on children through preparedness activities e.g. evacuation routes.
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Standard 6: Children
Step 4: Carry out child
protection commitments
A child protection policy should be in place for
your organisation, explaining the practical ways
in which the commitment to child protection is to be carried out, how to reduce
risks when working with children and how allegations on misconduct should be
investigated and managed.
 Do staff and volunteers know and understand the organisation’s child
protection policy?
 Are they clear about what is acceptable and unacceptable behaviour? (see
also Values).
 Are staff informed of their duty of care at induction and are they continually
updated through on-going training?
 Do community members and staff know where to go to if they need to raise
concerns? (see also Values, Step 3, and Accountability, Step 5).
 Are there clear guidelines once a child protection concern is identified?
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Standard 6: Children
Assess the level of risk to children by thinking about the amount of contact that
staff and volunteers are going to have with children in the project and the
community, and the context in which the project is taking place. The following
table can be used to identify the level of risk:
Area of risk1
Low Medium
High
Staff & volunteers (how recruited? was identification
checked? were references verified? are they supervised?)
Place/physical environment (is it a safe area?)
Activities & programmes (is it suitable? age-appropriate?
what is the adult/child ratio?)
Information (child-friendly? understood by staff?)
Organisational culture (open? closed? clear reporting
guidelines?)
If the risks are medium or high, you need to look into ways in which these can
be minimised:
Risk
no2
Do
nothing
Monitor closely and
review again:
(specify time
period & who is
responsible for
monitoring and
review)
(low risk)
Change
activities/policies/
plans/procedures to
reduce risk (specify
action to be taken,
time period & who is
responsible)
(medium to high
risk)
Stop the
activity/hand it over
to another
organisation (specify
action to be taken,
time period & who is
responsible)
1
2
3
4
5
6
1
Table from ‘Keeping Children Safe’ toolkit
Table from Childhope’s Child Protection Policies and Procedures Toolkit, ‘How to Create a Child-Safe
Organisation’ www.childhope.org
2
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Standard 6: Children
Step 5: Monitor and
evaluate the impact of your
child development approach
and child protection policy
Monitor the project to assess whether
the
project
is
supporting
child
development as intended and minimising
or preventing any negative impact. Monitor the project environment, capture
the learning and continually re-evaluate and re-assess the project to ensure
child safety, asking, for example, whether children are being protected from the
risk of kidnap, rape and forced recruitment. Are vulnerable children being
adequately educated and protected from the risk of sexual abuse and
exploitation?
Monitor procedures such as recruitment and selection, performance
management, ensure programmes encourage openness and accountability and
report your concerns of inappropriate behaviour quickly to line management or
the Child Protection Officer so that they can be investigated and dealt with
properly.
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Standard 6: Children
Project Examples
A partner working with children in Zimbabwe has an annual 3-day
conference for representatives of their beneficiary group (orphans) to
provide feedback and influence programming for the following year.
A youth-focused partner working in IDP camps in Sri Lanka saw that the
youngsters crammed into the lines of houses were exposed to violence due
to the adult stress levels following the tsunami, and they also had no space
for study or for play. The partner therefore began to use the local church
building and grounds to run after school study centres, home-work space
with electric lighting, and play areas for both genders. This provided the
young people with a more normal atmosphere than the cramped lines of IDP
housing, along with people who were willing to give time to each young
person to help them through the times of transition. Partner staff were able
to identify all the youth who had lost mothers in the tsunami and thus give
them extra support.
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