Below you will find all sections of the Guide for Supporting Community-Led Child Protection Processes. Click on any section to read the content online.
The companion Toolkit is available here.
1.1. Top-Down, Community-Based Approaches
Emergency situations clearly illustrate the need for top-down approaches. Imagine that a major earthquake devastates a crowded urban area in a country that is already racked by chronic poverty, weak governance, and a paucity of supports for vulnerable children. In the blink of an eye, masses of families become homeless and large numbers of children become unaccompanied or separated. Read more...
1.2. Limits of Top-Down, Expert Driven Approaches
Despite their advantages, top-down approaches have numerous limitations and problematic aspects. In terms of strengthening child protection systems, top-down approaches often lead to decontextualization in which outside models (such as those from the Anglo-Saxon world) are imposed in ways that do not fit the local context. At the community level, significant limitations include relatively low levels of community ownership, self-silencing by community members, backlash, high levels of dependency, and low levels of sustainability. Read more...
1.3. Reflection on Implications
In light of these limitations, it is vital to seek alternatives that complement top-down approaches, offer a stronger way forward, and unleash the full creative power and agency of communities. Since reflection is the key to successful change, please take a moment to reflect quietly on the questions presented in the box below... Read more...
2.1. How Ordinary People and Communities Help to Protect Children
The term ”child protection” may evoke images of serious violations against children and the intervention of police, social workers, or trained child protection workers. Read more...
2.2 What is a Community-led Approach to Child Protection?
Terms such as “community-led” can take on a variety of meanings. Based on experiences in different settings, there is little doubt that ”community-based” and “community-led” processes are often equated. However, there is in fact a world of difference between the two approaches (see Tool TRN 3 in the Toolkit), as the former are top-down whereas the latter are bottom-up. Read more...
2.3 Principles of Community-led Approaches
The principles of community-led approaches in the box below have been derived through the reflection and work of groups and agencies who have used highly participatory approaches in many different countries and contexts, including emergency and development contexts. Reflecting the audience of this Guide, the principles focus on how external workers should be oriented and what they should do in order to place greater power in the hands of communities and enable processes of community-led action on behalf of vulnerable children. Read more...
2.4 Critical Perspective
As valuable as community-led approaches are, they are by no means a “silver bullet” to be used in all situations. If the pressures of time and the magnitude of violations against children are enormous, as can happen in emergency settings, then a slow, deliberate, community-led process by itself may not be the best option. For example, if girls and boys are being recruited in large numbers and put into very dangerous settings, it might be more appropriate to use a top-down approach to stanch the flow of recruited children. Read more...
3.1 New Mindsets, Changed Roles
To transform our agencies and child protection practices, we first have to transform ourselves. An essential first step is to reflect on our own mindsets, values, and attitudes. Read more...3.2 Creating a Flexible Space for Community Decision-Making
Top-down approaches provide relatively little space for community decision-making and action since the NGO makes the main decisions and guides the intervention. Community-led approaches reverse this by assigning the decision-making power to communities. However, this power will be meaningful only if communities have sufficient room or decision-making space to choose which harms to address, which actions to take, and to work according to their own timetable and process. This approach requires greater flexibility on the part of the NGO. Read more...
3.3 Focus on Community Process and Relationships
Most child protection work in humanitarian and development settings entails attention to both content and process
The content pertains to the “what”—that is, to the child protection issues that need to be addressed, the actions needed, the measures to achieve accountability, and so on. Read more...
3.4 Critical Perspective
In ending this chapter on process, it is appropriate to underscore the importance of taking a reflective, self-critical stance and of challenging our assumptions. At every stage, we need to interrogate our assumptions that a particular approach to community-led work is most appropriate. Read more...
4.1 Facilitation Approach
In a community-led approach, the facilitator plays a key role in all phases: learning with and about the community; the community-led planning regarding which harm(s) to children to prevent and respond to; designing and implementing an appropriate community action; and evaluating the community-led action. Read more...
4.2 Role, Orientation, and Process
In a community-led approach, the facilitator’s role is to create space for and enable community dialogue, decision-making, and action on behalf of vulnerable children. More specific aspects of the facilitator’s role and responsibilities are shown in the box below. Read more...
4.3 How to Select, Prepare, and Support the Facilitators
Since facilitators play an important role in community-led approaches, it is vital to give careful attention to selecting and training people to become skilled facilitators. The usual processes for selecting and training facilitators may not be a good fit for community-led approaches. Put bluntly, it is considerably easier to do “facipulation” or NGO-guided facilitation than it is to help people become deep listeners and to fulfill the role of the facilitator as described above. Read more...
5.1 Initial Entry into the Community
Even before the learning phase begins, how we engage initially with the community has significant implications for the power dynamics and relationship with the community. To enter into a community in a respectful manner, we should adhere to local norms and expectations. For example, in a Muslim country, the norm may be to meet first with key imams and the shura, the group of male community elders. Read more...
5.2 An Open, Grounded Approach to Learning
To enable deep listening about the local context, it is important to take a slower approach to assessment than is typically used and to adopt the attitude that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” After all, local people may have views and categories that do not fit outsiders’ understandings. Even their view of who “children” are may differ considerably from that of outsiders. Read more...
5.3 Community Discussion and Reflection
To enable deep listening about the local context, it is important to take a slower approach to assessment than is typically used and to adopt the attitude that “we don’t know what we don’t know.” After all, local people may have views and categories that do not fit outsiders’ understandings. Even their view of who “children” are may differ considerably from that of outsiders. Read more...
6.1 Deciding to Work Together
The process of deciding to work together may occur organically in the context of providing feedback from the learning phase to the community. During the collective reflection that accompanies the feedback, community people naturally ask themselves, “What are we going to do about these harms to children?”, and they often ask agency workers, “Will you continue to support us?” The latter question is complex and could carry hidden expectations for financial support or even for a donor-beneficiary relationship in which the non-governmental organization (NGO) leads and takes the key decisions. Read more...
6.2 Communities Select Which Harm(s) to Children to Address
The community-led process begins with the community itself defining which harm(s) to children it is most concerned about and intends to address.
This decision has significant implications for children’s well-being and also enables genuine community ownership. As the communities themselves take stock of what is most damaging to children and decide which harms to address, they increase their motivation and take responsibility for addressing the issues collectively. In most cases, it is useful for the facilitator to help the community focus initially on manageable tasks that can be completed relatively soon. This initial success helps to build the community’s confidence and ability to take on more challenging tasks. Read more...
6.3 Community Action Planning
Having selected which harm(s) to children they will address, communities can turn next to thinking more systematically about how they want to address those harms through community-led action.
Most communities already have experience in collective action planning, as they regularly take decisions about issues such as where and how to farm, how to help provide education and clean water for their children, how to deal with crime-ridden urban neighborhoods, and so on. Of course, the communities are free to develop their own action plans and planning processes. Read more...
7.1 The Action Process
Like all aspects of community-led work, the community-led action is highly contextual, and is created, managed, and led by the community.
In some cases, community-led action can spring up without the extensive planning and steps to develop an inclusive process that were discussed in previous chapters. In some settings, the action process may begin with a small group of people who have identified a harm to children and have decided to take action to address it. Read more...
7.2 Monitoring and Evaluation
Most communities have a history of collectively planning activities around issues such as poverty, farming, and education and then taking action in accordance with their plans. As they work, they periodically take stock of how they are doing and make needed adjustments. Although they may not refer to these activities as “monitoring and evaluation” (or M&E), the process is important. Read more...
7.3 Sustainability
The international humanitarian community has prioritized sustainability in its global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The links between these SDGs and child protection are most visible in SDG 16, which targets the ending of abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence against and torture of children. Another target of SDG 16 is ensuring responsive, inclusive, participatory, and representative decision-making at all levels. Read more...