Child advocacy consists of individuals, professionals, and advocacy organizations who speak out about children’s best interests. An individual or organization engaging in advocacy seeks to protect children’s rights, which may be abridged or abused in several areas due to several circumstances, including domestic, physical, and sexual abuse and neglect.
The Idea: The birth of Child Advocacy Centers (CACs) began when former congressman Robert Cramer identified the lack of communication between social services and criminal justice services in cases of abused children. His idea spread and ultimately led to the beginning of CACs around the United States.
The Beginning: Robert Cramer helped develop the CAC model of a Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) approach. This approach brings together a group of individuals: law enforcement, criminal justice, child protective services, and medical and mental health workers. This group works together to create what we know today as a Child Advocacy Center. Child Advocacy Centers soon gained popularity in the late 1980s, and the National Children’s Advocacy Center was established in 1985 in Alabama due to the significant number of occurrences of child sexual abuse. In 1988, children’s advocacy centers around the country joined forces to establish the National Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers (Now named National Children’s Alliance or NCA), which serves as the home base for all Child Advocacy Centers.
The Present: There are now approximately 795 CACs around the United States. In 2011, these CACs served 269,000 children, which has doubled in the past decade! (Stephens, Martinez, & Braun, 2012).
Child Protection Case Management
What is case management?
CASE MANAGEMENT is organizing and carrying out work to address an individual child’s (and their family’s) needs in an appropriate, systematic, and timely manner through direct support and referrals and per a project or program’s objectives.
Child Protection case management can be provided in emergency and development settings using a social work approach to address various child protection concerns. Case management services can be provided as part of a strategy to reduce inter-connected risks and vulnerabilities that cause protection violations or as a response to violations that children have experienced. Case management procedures ensure quality, consistency, and coordination of services.
Key Points about Case Management
- It should focus on the needs of an individual child and their family, ensuring that concerns are addressed systematically in consideration of the child’s best interests and building upon the child and family’s resilience.
- It should be provided in accordance with the established case management process, ensuring that each case follows a series of steps (as shown below) involving children’s meaningful participation and family empowerment throughout.
- Involve the coordination of services and supports within an interlinked or referral system.
- Require systems for ensuring the accountability of case management agencies (within a formal or statutory system where this exists).
- They are provided by one key worker (a caseworker or case manager) responsible for ensuring that decisions are taken in the child’s best interests; the established process manages the case and takes responsibility for coordinating the actions of all actors.
7 Steps of the Case Management Process
The case management process is a holistic tool vital in providing comprehensive care for vulnerable children. It follows a series of defined steps.
Step 1: Identification/ Intake
This is the caseworker’s first contact and initial direct contact with the child, serving as the gateway for a child needing care and protection. During this phase, the case worker prioritizes building a rapport with the child, considering their best interests, immediate safety, and basic needs.
Additionally, it involves thorough case recording, ensuring all details are carefully documented. The Case Management guideline provides a helpful checklist and tools to assist caseworkers during this stage.
Step 2: Assessment
At this stage, the caseworker conducts a comprehensive assessment to understand the child’s challenges and needs while considering their rights and family dynamics within the community.
This evaluation includes assessments and interventions encompassing the child’s physical, emotional, social, moral, and cognitive developmental aspects.
Step 3: Case Planning
In Step 3, the focus shifts to devising strategies that effectively address the child’s physical, emotional, mental, and social needs based on the findings from the assessment stage.
Case planning is a more interactive and collaborative process that engages the child, the family, and the case worker to ensure effective decision-making. The resulting case plans are well documented, detailing clearly defined goals, objectives, tasks, responsibilities, and time frames.
Step 4: Implementation
In this phase, the case plan springs into action. It involves providing direct services to the child/ family or linking the child/family to an appropriate professional (referral) by facilitating referrals for the identified needs.
Step 5: Case Follow-up and Review
In Step 5, regular monitoring and review of the case plan are essential. Valuable feedback is obtained from the child, caregivers, and service providers, allowing the caseworker to assess the services’ effectiveness and whether the child’s needs have evolved.
This ongoing evaluation may occur through home visits, service-provider interactions, phone calls, and emails. In some instances, case conferences may be convened to evaluate goal attainment.
Step 6: Case Closure
Here, the caseworker or case manager carefully reviews the circumstances, goals, and outcomes of the services provided thus far. At this stage, the caseworker makes a well-informed decision about terminating the case while considering whether the plan has been achieved.
Step 7: Case Conference
Step 7 involves a formal multidisciplinary meeting that includes all child protection actors. This helps explore problem-solving from different perspectives and disciplines and can be called at any stage of the case planning, implementation, or follow-up.
Child Protection Advocacy
What is this approach?
Child Protection Advocacy (CPA) is a set of specific interventions that focus on strengthening the child protection system (both formal and informal elements) at the community level, thus empowering communities and local partners to strengthen the protection of children from abuse, neglect, exploitation and other forms of violence. The model strengthens both the protective environment for children, as well as for children themselves, to improve their well-being and fulfill their rights to protection.
When would this project model be used?
CPA can be applied in any context (including fragile contexts) where child protection prevention efforts or effective local-level responses (both formal and informal) are lacking. The project model is most appropriate when the local community has decided that child protection issues are a priority for the sustained well-being of children, especially the most vulnerable.
What is the Child Protection and Advocacy project model?
The Child Protection and Advocacy (CPA) project model is a set of specific interventions that focus on strengthening the child protection system (both formal and informal elements) at the community level, thus empowering local communities to strengthen the protection of children from abuse, neglect, exploitation and other forms of violence. The model strengthens both the protective environment for children, as well as for children themselves, to improve their well-being and fulfill their rights to protection. The primary beneficiaries of the CPA project model are children who are at risk of or currently suffering in situations of abuse, exploitation, neglect, discrimination, or other forms of violence within families or communities. The CPA project model was developed to provide a comprehensive framework for child protection work at the community level and to establish an evidence base for advocacy efforts at national, regional, and global levels. It uses a systems strengthening approach1, which emphasizes prevention, protection and response, coordination between sectors, and integrated responses that can benefit all children. This project model is accompanied by a toolkit that provides further guidance on implementation. The project model incorporates the learning and experience from numerous community-based child protection (CBCP) projects and vulnerable child advocacy (VCA) projects, adapting rich experiences and practices from inside as well as outside World Vision (WV).
The CPA project model provides a guide, a starting point, rather than a prescriptive approach. It is a resource that enables local partners and WV program staff to develop appropriate interventions within their context. CPA projects need to be based upon an in-depth analysis by partners (or with partners) of the root causes of child protection issues in the community, as well as the effectiveness and gaps in the current child protection system.2 The Analysis, Design, and Planning Tool (ADAPT) for child protection guides national and local child protection analysis and mapping. Local partners can then collaborate in using the CPA project model and toolkit to develop strategies to strengthen children’s protection at the community level.
What are the main components of the model?
A local CPA group should plan and implement the CPA project model. The project model includes four core components. These interventions impact child protection issues and system gaps, commonly found in numerous contexts. The CPA group should consider choosing one or more interventions based on the problems, gaps, and opportunities identified through the ADAPT for child protection. The group or committee may also select other interventions based on local opportunities and needs to supplement these core components. Sometimes, the CPA components can be combined with aspects of other project models based on findings in the ADAPT, creating an integrated project at the local level. In addition to establishing and strengthening a local CPA group, the four core components in the project model are building community awareness and conscientization, establishing and enhancing reporting and referral mechanisms, providing quality support to vulnerable families, and building life skills and resilience to protect children.
What are the expected benefits or impacts of this model?
The four components of the CPA project model contribute to strengthening various elements of the child protection system. The project can result in the prevention and reduction of patterns of abuse, neglect, or exploitation of children, as well as improved care and protection of children who have experienced abuse, neglect, or exploitation. The model contributes to these outcomes through a systems approach that will:
- Address child protection issues in a comprehensive and sustainable manner.
- Affirm the role of parents and caregivers as those with the primary responsibility for the care and protection of children.
- Affirm the responsibility of the state to guarantee the care and protection of children, through respecting, protecting and fulfilling children’s protection rights as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and other international human rights instruments.
- Strengthen the protective environment for all children.
Therefore, The CPA project model contributes primarily to WV’s child well-being aspiration, ‘children are cared for, protected and participating.’ However, abuse, neglect or exploitation can undermine children’s development. Therefore, a CPA project can be foundational for progress in any of the child well-being outcomes.