Cayman Islands Red Cross deputy director Carolina Ferreira has called for mandatory child-protection training for all service groups interacting with children.
She made the call for more broad-based training as the Protection Starts Here multi-agency child abuse prevention project marks its 10th year.
Ferreira, speaking with the Cayman Compass via Zoom recently, said though the project – spearheaded by the Red Cross – has been successful over the last decade, the essential protection training it offers is not sufficiently utilised in the community.
“The only place where any type of child protection training or awareness and education training has been made mandatory… is within educational institutions,” she said, adding training should be expanded to all service groups and programmes interacting with children.
Mandatory teacher training through Darkness to Light Stewards of Children modules is offered by the Red Cross, but Ferreira said a more wider net should be cast.
“Everywhere else it’s just highly recommended or suggested or it’s because people, like our group, has been doing a lot of awareness. What we’re getting people to recognise is that they need to do it not only to protect children, but also to protect themselves because it’s about ensuring that people are all on the same page,” she added.
Ferreira, in her statement announcing the 10th anniversary of Protection Starts Here, said there are still no national standards for youth-serving organisations in the Cayman Islands.
“This is something that is long overdue, and this concerted effort to spotlight child safeguarding this year is really aimed at turning this gap into a gain before the end of the year,” she said.
The pandemic had an impact on the number of training sessions that were available through the project, she added.
However, more than that, she said, the true impact of COVID-19 on children in abusive situations will not be known for some time.
“We did the mobile health and wellness checks as a way to try to extend the lifeline… to some kids who may have been in that situation because there were so many issues with mental health, physical health, and what not, following the lockdown,” Ferreira said.
“We know for a fact that vulnerable communities and vulnerable persons are made even more vulnerable once a disaster hits, and COVID has been a disaster. It’s not the type of disaster that we’re normally used to but it certainly is [one],” she said.
According to Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub statistics, child safeguarding referrals have been on the rise. By the end of 2020, there were 1,146 referrals, an increase over the 1,036 recorded the year before.
Statistics for 2021 are not yet available.
Interest in programmes, but extra push needed
Apart from the Stewards of Children training, she said the Red Cross also launched the Seal of Protection initiative to give those organisations taking child safeguarding seriously the opportunity to have that stamp that basically says these groups are meeting minimum standards for child protection.
This, she said, would enable customers or parents to recognise the safeguarding standard of places such as camps.
As an example, she said, “If all things were equal [between] Camp A and Camp B, and Camp A had the seal of protection and Camp B didn’t, then as a discerning consumer, I would choose Camp A and therefore create the demand for that so that Camp B would come up to standard.”
However, she said the Red Cross realised after launching the seal that the community lacked the appropriate resources and capacity to follow up, so it had to develop an entire policy development workshop to give organisations the opportunity to obtain the seal.
Ferreira explained that even if groups participated in the Darkness to Light Stewards of Children training, there was no mandatory reporting policy, or a written code of conduct. She likened the situation to a company screening a potential employee and asking for references.
“[B]ut are you calling those references? Are you asking those questions?” she said.
Community discussion planned
Protection Starts Here was launched In 2012 with a series of seven public service announcements focussing on child sexual abuse in the Cayman Islands. The PSAs were shown at the cinema and broadcast on then television station Cayman 27, with funding support from Help For Children/Hedge Funds Care Cayman Islands
The PSH 10th anniversary Launch will be hosted virtually on Zoom on 10 Feb., at 6:30pm. ‘Unspeakable: The Virtual Relaunch’ will include a viewing of the 30-minute educational documentary on child sexual abuse in Cayman, followed by a panel discussion with members of the PSH working group on the gains and gaps in child safeguarding in Cayman.
“Thursday is going to be to .. create that level of awareness to talk about those things… how far we’ve come, how much it is that we have left to do and why it is that it is on each one of us as individuals to really take up the torch for this, because that’s the only way child safeguarding is a commitment that you make every single day. There isn’t a magic wand where if you do this one thing, then you’re… [done]… [I]t’s every single day,” she said.
The training programmes are free to the public.
For more information, or to join the session, email [email protected]
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