SAFE AND NURTURING ENVIRONMENT

SHERYL C. LISING

The Department of Education (DepEd) highlighted significant measures in championing Learner Rights and Protection, underscoring the importance of providing children with safe space, which is vital in their development. The agency is tasked to provide children with a safe, nurturing, and loving life that allows them to play, learn, and grow into responsible, productive, and well-rounded individuals, and requires will, commitment, and a strong sense of unity of purpose as a community of elected leaders, policy makers, educators, advocates, development partners, business development supporters, and parents all working together to champion Filipino Children. The Department has created the Child Protection Unit (CPU) to strengthen the implementation of the Child Protection Policy and to establish a mechanism to fully operationalize, implement, and coordinate programs, projects, and activities pertaining to child protection. The CPU envisions that learners in the Philippines are protected from violence, exploitation, discrimination, bullying, and other forms of abuse in schools where their right to quality and inclusive education is respected, promoted, and fulfilled. Believing that the protection of the rights of children is possible when everyone is involved, the CPU envisions that children are safeguarded while the duties of the parents, school personnel, and the community are maintained through positive and non-violent discipline. The Child Protection Policy is a means to create a safe environment where the child is protected, safeguards are in place, and authority is maintained in a conflict-free way. The CPU shall formulate policies concerning all matters pertaining to the right of the child in basic education to protection from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation, and maltreatment; serve as the lead office in planning, implementing, coordinating, monitoring, and evaluating programs, projects and activities; give due emphasis to integration of child protection in the basic education curriculum, instruction and assessment in coordination with various offices of the Department; initiate and coordinate cooperation or partnership activities partners and stakeholders; andestablish and maintain a monitoring and reporting mechanism for all child protection-related concerns. The Child Protection Policy recognizes the concerns of the children who are gravely threatened or endangered by all kinds of violence, exploitation, and abuse that affect their normal development and their rights to education such as Child abuse; Discrimination against children; Child exploitation; Sexual and Economic Exploitation; Violence against children committed in school; Bullying and peer pressure; Corporal Punishment, and All forms of Abuse.

-oOoThe author is a Teacher II at Ayala High School