(Insert Institution)
Introduction
The safety and wellbeing of children has been a concern worldwide. Different strategies and approaches initiated and implemented by various nations and institutions yielded results that were below the expectations. This forced the stakeholders in children affairs to rethink on the avenues they previously employed. For instance, in 1990 the United States Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect recommended for the change of the country’s child protection system after observing it did very little to assure the children their welfare in the contemporary society. Kimbrough-Melton and Campbell (2008) found that,
“The failure of the child protection system to “keep kids safe” prompted the Board to call for a new system of child protection—a universal system grounded in the creation of communities where families, friends, and neighbors are actively involved in ensuring the safety of children” (p.100)
Therefore, there is need for universal approach in addressing child abuse and neglect, through community based approach whereby each stakeholder executes his or her mandate as expected.
Community Approaches and Mobilization
The World Health Organization (WHO) defines Child Abuse and Neglect as,
“Every kind of physical, sexual, emotional abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, commercial or other exploitation resulting in actual or potential harm to the child’s health, survival, development or dignity in the context of a relationship of responsibility, trust or power.” (Kiran, 2011, p.79)
According to the definition the ill-treatment and exploitation happens in the community thus, it must conceptualize the issues to act responsibly. In Kim-Ju et al.’s (2008) “Community Mobilization and Its Application to Youth Violence Prevention” they define community as, “people who share a concern, geographical area, or one or more population characteristics (e.g., culture, age)” (p.5). They also refer to community mobilization, “ as individuals taking action organized around specific community issues” (p.5) Therefore, community mobilization facilitates community-based approaches or strategies.
Child abuse and violation of human rights is currently a concern of the international community. For instance, various countries ratified the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Article 19 of this convention requires the state parties to put all the measures in place to safe guard the interests of the children. In the Editorial (2004) “Child Maltreatment”, it outlines the article as follows,
“State Parties shall take all appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect the child from all forms of physical and mental violence, injury or abuse, neglect or negligent treatment, maltreatment or exploitation, including sexual abuse, while in the care of the parent(s), legal guardian(s) or any other person who has the care of the child.” (p.64)
In a bid to embrace community-based approach, various child protection systems are using different models and community mobilization strategies. First is the Neighborhood-Based Child Protection Strategy that the US Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect proposed. In this case, the troubled families and children at neighborhood level will get both social and economic support and formal and informal services. These will be in the form of self-help programs and through adopting the principle of neighbor helping neighbor (Kimbrough-Melton & Campbell, 2008, p.103). For example, Kimbrough-Melton and Campbell (2008) acknowledge, “the Board challenged “all American adults to resolve to be good neighbors—to know, watch, and support their neighbors’ children and to offer help when needed to their neighbors’ families.” (p.103) the aim then is to ensure members of the communities help one another.
The Strong Communities Approach is another initiative to ensure child protection by building systems that support the families of young children. The most important consideration here is child protection should be an everyday life affair. Kimbrough-Melton and Campbell (2008)stipulate the vision as, “for every child and every parent to be confident that someone will notice and someone will care whenever they have reason to celebrate, worry, or grieve” (p.104). This approach complements the neighborhood-based strategy by ensuring people are caring and considerate whenever they interact especially where children are present. It also strives to ensure an all-inclusive approach and mutual assistance to those with children. Since all the primary community institutions where families work, study, play and worship as well as the community servants take part in the initiative.
The strong communities approach relies on two key strategies the outreach and direct support to families with children. The outreach is to build the capacity of the communities by encouraging the people to work together and employ the primary community institutions’ resources in supporting and nurturing the families (Kimbrough-Melton & Campbell, 2008, p.105). In the commentary, on “The Great Recession and the Risk for Child Maltreatment” Garbarino (2013) found that, “deteriorating economic conditions faced by families in the Great Recession of 2007–2009 appears to validate the view that bad economic conditions cause child abuse” (p.730) this justifies the need of unity because economic instability catalyzes child maltreatment. Therefore, the outreach activities should revolutionize the mindset of people to learn to respond to the needs of children and their parents. The activities much adopt a multi-sectorial approach with each stakeholder playing his or her role as expected.
The success of any community-based strategy depends on the means used in community mobilization. Community mobilization provides a framework for encouraging co-operation, participation and collaboration for the “common good” (Kim-Ju et.al, 2008, p.5). It is a means through which the people of the community come together, to take part in the activities of protecting the welfare of the children thus own the process by contributing in terms of material resources and by giving suggestions on the same. It encourages non-individualized approaches in addressing community issues by considering social determinants. In order to address the challenges two approaches are suitable namely, the top-down approach or the bottom-up approach. The top-down approach is less participatory because it initiates solutions from the experts’ side but the bottom-up or grass root approach gives an opportunity to the community members to identify their problems and their respective solutions which the expert fine tune. Therefore, when developing any program or plan the community must be the focus let it identify the challenges, suggest the activities for mitigating their impact and implement the same after building their capacity (Allison et.al, 2011, p.16).
Summary
Children welfare is an international affair where various countries are in a bid to address child maltreatment in a more responsive manner. We observe the international institutions conceptualizing means as in the case of the United Nations Convention on Rights for the Child. This is after realizing that the approaches they earlier employed did not give the expected results because of their failure to involve the community as required. For instance, the US Advisory Board on Child Abuse and Neglect proposed a universal approach that is all-inclusive. The success of these means rely on proper community mobilization strategies.
References
Allison, W. (2011). Connecting youth violence prevention, positive youth development, and community mobilization . Am J Community Psychol, 8-20.
Editorial. (2004). Child maltreatment. Journal of Tropical Pediatrics, 64-66.
Garbarino, J. (2013). Child Abuse & Neglect. Socio-economic forces and the problem of counting in understanding child abuse and neglect:Commentary on the great recession and the risk for child maltreatment. Chicago, USA: Loyola University Chicago.
Kimbrough-Melton, &. C. (2008). Strong communities for children:A community-wide approach to prevention of child abuse and neglect. Family and Community Health, 100-112.
Kim-Ju, G. (2008). Community mobilization and its application to youth violence prevention. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, S5-S12.
Kiran, K. (2011). Child abuse and neglect. Journal of Indian Society of Pedodontics and Preventive Dentistry, S79-S82.
