Save the Children: Enlightening community on vulnerable children

While the probation officer described the programme as successful in the area in alleviating child abuse cases, he said more can be still done to equip CCWs with adequate resources so as to timeously and effectively report child molestation cases.

“There are some cases like those of sexually abused children which are reported very late. So, we want our CCWs to be provided with everything that will help them to identify the cases so that the children are also given services easily. Otherwise the programme has been a success because the CCWs are now able to identify cases. For example, there are some cases which they considered normal but following their trainings they are now seeing their abnormalities,” said Khanye.

A lead CCW worker in Phindi- Gande village, Alice Dube hailed Save the Children for training her and other CCWs.

“I have been trained on how to report and investigate cases of child abuse. There were a lot of child abuse cases happening in this area. One of the major cases of child abuse happening here is neglect of children by parents. Most parents are not willing to pay schools fees for their children yet some of them have the means to do so,” said Dube who is also a councillor.

Dube said the CCWs’s work was being affected by lack of adequate resources. Her concerns were echoed by Nyahuma. “We have challenges in resource constraints. We train child care workers but the resources to follow up to provide mentoring and support is very scarce. So once we train them , it becomes difficult for them to be able to continuous apply the learning from the trainings because once we train them , we want to mentor them.

“We want to coach them to be able to continuously provide services but this is a challenge we are facing on the side of the child care workers. They have also resource constraints in that they must travel for long distances. The also use their personal funds because the bicycles they were given have broken down,” she said.

Nyahuma also cited child neglect as one of the major challenges facing children in most communities.

“From the feedback from the communities, one of the main issues that the children are facing is neglect and it has been pointed out that young parents are the ones neglecting their children which is an indication that in communities especially the young parents need to be capacitated on parenting so that they are able to care for their children. We have also received issues to do with children engaging in unsafe migration to South Africa without proper documentation,” said Nyahuma.

Apart from neglect, Nyahuma also cited drug abuse as another major problem.

“I have just received a surprising issue of children as young as 11 and 12 years old engaging in drug abuse. It is an area we had not thought of in our area of programming but we have realised that we have children who are engaging in drug abuse. Engagement with their parents and other adults within the community has proved that there are low levels of knowledge on the dangers of drug abuse. The case management cadres are not taken seriously when they try to communicate with parents of affected children,” she said.

Nyahuma expressed concern over some traditional leaders whom she said are not taking seriously issues to do with child protection.

“I have been just informed that there are some communities where allegations have been raised that alleged child abusers seems to be paying through livestock so that some of these cases are dismissed or not taken further. We need to invest more on community leadership. It is something which we have not really done. Community leaders need to understand child protection and why we need to protect our boys and girls in communities,” she added. Violence and abuse of children is on the increase with 60 percent of reported rape survivors being children and the majority being girls.

One in eight girls is reportedly being sexually harassed at school and 22 percent of children reportedly being abused by care givers. Communities remain a crucial source of potential support since it includes friends , neighbours , traditional leaders , elders , teachers , youth groups and religious leaders who can provide care to vulnerable children.