The guidelines have been developed to respond to an existing gap in child safeguarding practices, which often fail to recognize the specific requirements and adaptations needed to ensure the safety of children with disabilities.
The guidelines build on consultations with children and youth with disabilities as well as experience from over 20 organisations. They serve to build knowledge and frame the rationale supporting the relevance and necessity of Disability-Inclusive Child Safeguarding.
These guidelines, developed by Able Child Africa and Save the Children International, seek to address this gap and provide practical advice for organisations and practitioners to ensure all children are safeguarded.
Practical Recommendations
For example the guidelines include practical recommendations on how to:
- embed a disability-inclusive lens into child-safeguarding policies, codes of conduct and on-boarding procedures
- plan, design and conduct activities to increase awareness on disability-inclusive child safeguarding
- plan for and mitigate physical, emotional, financial and medical risks before, during and after activities to ensure children with disabilities are safe during programme delivery
- set up reporting mechanisms that are inclusive of children with different types of disabilities
- plan for and conduct disability-inclusive child safeguarding response systems that meet the requirements of children with different disabilities
What the guidelines include?
- These guidelines aim to provide practical guidance on how to ensure that work carried out by organisations is safe for children with disabilities.
- They are not intended to replace broader child safeguarding guidelines or existing organisational safeguarding procedures. Instead, they aim to complement existing thinking and provide tangible recommendations for disability-inclusive child safeguarding that can be integrated into existing systems or serve as guidance for setting up inclusive systems from the start.
- The guidelines are not intended as specialist advice to be used only by disability experts. Instead, they are intended to contribute to the wider conversations on improving child safeguarding systems and practices and to offer practical solutions for safe programme implementation.
- These guidelines also recognise that disability-inclusive child safeguarding will benefit all children as they take into consideration individual requirements and abilities.
- Chapter 1 of the guidelines sets the scene, presents the rationale behind the guidelines and introduces the topic. Chapters 2 and 3 provide the reader with an understanding of these guidelines’ two main concepts, disability inclusion and child safeguarding. Chapter 4 outlines the reasons why children with disabilities need specific attention when it comes to child safeguarding, rather than only being safeguarded through usual practices.
- Chapters 5 to 9 of the guidelines move beyond theory and concepts and introduce practical implications and recommendations. Chapter 5 specifically focuses on building disability-inclusive child safeguarding into an organisation’s culture and systems and provides key advice and recommendations on how to do this.
- Chapters 6 to 9 cover the four of the five key stages of the child safeguarding cycle: empowerment, prevention, reporting and responding. They provide detailed advice on good practice and practical recommendations for actions at each of these stages.
Who the guidelines are for?
- These guidelines are for international development and humanitarian actors working with children, or representatives of organisations of persons with disabilities (OPDs) working in development and humanitarian contexts.
- The guidelines are written to ensure relevance for disability-focused organisations and the disability movement, who may have strong systems for disability inclusion but are in the inception phase or improving their child safeguarding systems. They also have relevance for child rights organisations or development and humanitarian actors who may already have robust child safeguarding systems but are only beginning to mainstream disability in their work.
- The guidelines can be used by staff involved in organisational and programmelevel planning, including senior leadership, mid-level managers, or individuals whose roles are specific to child safeguarding such as safeguarding managers, advisers and leaders.
- They are also intended for frontline staff active in the project cycle, including project coordinators, consultants and volunteers.
- Therefore, the guidelines are relevant to all readers, but some chapters will be particularly relevant for certain roles.
You can download this guide for free here.
