As adults, there are times when we reflect on our childhood years and feel very emotional about situations whereby those vested with our care and protection failed to consider what was in our best interest. More often than not, children feel that their voices are not being heard, that they are being treated unfairly or that their real problems are trivialized and sometimes ignored. Child advocacy is all about speaking out on what is in the best interests of children, their needs and rights. Some of the issues in child advocacy include child abuse, foster care, parental substance abuse, child access to pre-school programs and child care, child health, juvenile justice and child welfare. Advocacy for children mainly involves upholding and defending of children’s affirmative, entitlement and protection of their rights or needs. It aims at elevating the children’s voices, speaking for them and ensuring their health, safety, wellbeing and rights. Child advocacy pertains listening to children and making sure that we involve them in decisions that impact on their lives (Oliver & Dalrymple 7). The purpose of this paper is to consider how I would, as an adult, might advocate for the child that I was and analyze the specific advocacy situations and issues that are unique to advocating for children.
Description of an Advocacy Situation
An example of an advocacy situation from my own childhood in which an advocate would have been useful tom me is child abuse. While I did not personally experience any type of child abuse, my best friend did and up to now I feel that the kind of advocacy that was available to him was not enough and satisfactory. When we were about 10, my friend’s parents passed away in a tragic road accident. Thereafter, he had to be taken for foster care in which his aunt agreed to take care of him until he reached 18. However, he did not know that this would later turn out to be a nightmare. After some time, things changed and my friend’s aunt and her husband began being cruel to him and would beat him up on several occasions claiming that he had become a burden to their family. Even though his aunt knew of this mistreatment, she did nothing about it since she considered it a normal punishment for a minor of his age then. However, I was convinced that this was akin to child abuse. For, besides being beaten, he would be denied basic necessities like food, healthcare, love, care and education. When things got worse and my friend stopped attending school, I decided to report the matter to the local child welfare services office in our locality. The officers did not do much about my friend’s situation claiming they did not find enough evidence of child abuse that would warrant the appointment of a child advocate or to review custody rights. The only thing they helped with was to make regular visits to his home to enquire about his treatment but his aunt would not allow him to tell them the truth of what was going on. She threatened that if he told them that he was being abused in any way, they would make sure he spent the rest of his life on the streets as a street urchin. Hence, to this extent, I can argue that child advocacy that was available to my friend had not helped in fully advocating for his rights as a child. Though I tried my best to advocate for his rights, it was never enough to speak for my best friend’s rights as a child.
Hence, after all I have come to learn about child advocacy in this course, I feel the level of advocacy my best friend received was far below the required threshold. In order to adequately advocate for children’s rights and protect them from such issues as child abuse, I think more is needed to help improve the situation. According to Bartholet, in order to help improve the level of child protection and advocacy in areas of child neglect and abuse, there is need for the state to play an active role in ensuring early intensive intervention and state intervention (217). Examples of these measures would include, in this author’s view, early intensive home visitation programs and child welfare programs. Moreover, as Barrett, Lester and Durham clearly point out, in cases of child mistreatment, child advocacy should involve the provision of professional counselling service to the maltreated children. This could be at home or at school where school counsellors help in promoting healthy academic development of children being abused at home (86). Additionally, according to a study by Scannapieco, Connell-Carrick and Painter, in order to improve child advocacy for the youth exiting foster care, there is need for collaboration and communication with them on their unmet needs, permanent connections and youth-focused practice (423).
Unique Issues in Child Advocacy
According to Melton (116), some of the issues that are unique to child advocacy include sexual exploitation or abuse, statutory limitation issues, access to child healthcare, foster children’s rights to representation, homes and service and education; child welfare, child nutrition and hunger. Furthermore, the issue of the role of parents, foster parents and other child advocacy organizations in ensuring that children’s voices are heard is another issue that is unique to child advocacy. This is because, in case of abusive parents, it raises serious legal issues when children have to be placed in foster care where their best interests may not be met as it would be under their biological parent’s care. Melton also notes that issues such as child rights lobbying and informed consent problems are some of the other issues that arise in child advocacy (23).
Additional Advocacy Possibilities, Strategies and Solutions
In order to ensure successful advocacy, Buckley suggests that a number of approaches be used to ensure effectiveness. These strategies and techniques include policy accountability and monitoring, policy change, building stakeholder advocacy capacity, planning and implementation (Buckley 6). In addition to these, child advocacy on issues like child abuse and mistreatment may be solved through legislative process and public awareness creation on the importance of protecting children from harm and caring for their needs and interests. Prevention and public awareness advocacy techniques will go a long way in ensuring that the relevant stakeholders charged with the care of children are aware of the impacts of child mistreatment and the legal consequences. Also, as a child protection measure, Tomison argues that besides the legislation of child protection against abuse and neglect, provision of family support would be another possibility of advocating for children’s rights (54). To do this, it is important to strengthen families and communities and adopt a developmental prevention approach that aims at reducing risk factors while promoting child protection factors (Tomison 54)
Moreover, according to the American Humane Association, the best approaches to the prevention of child mistreatment include focusing on families and children identified by public child welfare agencies and collaborating with communities and extended families to help families in preventing child neglect and abuse (3). Further to this, child advocacy for may involve the integration of preventive approaches in a number of disciplines and systems and raising the voice of children to enable them to report cases of child abuse and mistreatment. Also, the establishment of community-based child mistreatment, neglect and abuse programs and centers, educational advocacy and promotion of collaboration in child welfare are other effective tactics for advocating for children’s rights. However, Cashmore and Parkinson argue that while it is important to actively involve children in decision making on issues such as family or parental disputes , it is the view of child advocacy professionals and parents that children’s views should never be determinative (20). Nevertheless, there is an a general agreement among lawyers, parents and children that it is important for children’s views are heard so that they feel that they have been heard and that somebody cares and speaks for them.
In conclusion, as Kumari and Broo suggest, child advocacy should involve court-based strategies, legislative strategies, and community education (199). Examples of the legislative framework that would be useful in child rights advocacy include the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment and Adoption Reform Act 1978. Therefore, personally I would ensure that children have a wide array of possibilities of reporting child abuse and expressing their concerns or needs. I would also ensure that their best interests are always taken into account in any decision affecting them and that the society is made aware of children’s rights through active advocacy programs.
Works Cited
American Humane Association. "Child welfare policy beiefing: Strategies to address child abuse & neglect." American Humane Association Journal 1.2 (2011): 1-5. Print.
Barrett, Kathleen Marie, Susan V Lester and Judith C Durham. "Child maltreatment and the advoacy role of professional school counsellors." Journal for Social Action in Counseling and Psychology 3.2 (2011): 86-103. Print.
Bartholet, Elizabeth. "The challenge of children's rights advoacy: Problems and progress in the area of child abuse and neglect." Whittier Journal of Child and Family Advocacy 3.2 (2004): 215-230. Print.
Buckley, Steve. “Advocacy strategies and approaches: Overview paper.” 15 June 2016. <https://www.apc.org/en/node/9456>.
Cashmore, Judy and Patrick Parkinson. "Children's participation in family law disputes: The views of children, parents, layers and counsellors." Family Matters 82 (2009):15-20. Print.
Kumari, Ved and Susan L Broo. Creative child advoacy: Global perspective. New Delhi/Thousand Oaks/London: SAGE Publications, 2004. Print.
Melton, Gary B. Child advoacy: Psychological issues and interventions. New York & London: Plenum Press, 2012. Print.
Oliver, M Christine and Jane Dalrymple. Developing advocacy for children and young people: Current issues in research, policy and practice. London & Philadelphia: Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2008. Print.
Scannapieco, Maria, Kelli Connell-Carrick and Kirstin Painter. "In their own words: Challenges facing youth aging out of foster care." Child Adolescence Social Work Journal 24 (2007): 423-435. Print.
Tomison, Adam. "A history of child protection: Back to the future?" Family Matters 60 (2001): 46-56. Print.
