essay on child protection policy

Essay on Child Protection

Students are often asked to write an essay on Child Protection in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

Let’s take a look…

100 Words Essay on Child Protection

Understanding child protection.

Child protection refers to the safeguarding of children from harm. It involves measures and structures to prevent and respond to abuse, neglect, violence and exploitation affecting children.

Importance of Child Protection

Children are the future of our society. Protecting them ensures a safer, healthier, and happier world. Child protection helps them grow and develop without fear, promoting their mental and physical well-being.

Role of Society

Everyone has a role in child protection. Teachers, parents, and even children themselves can contribute. By being vigilant and reporting any signs of harm, we can keep children safe.

Child protection is a crucial element of a thriving society. It’s everyone’s responsibility to ensure the safety and well-being of children.

Also check:

• Speech on Child Protection

250 Words Essay on Child Protection

Introduction.

Child protection refers to the safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. It’s a critical aspect of ensuring the holistic development of a child, enabling them to grow into well-rounded, healthy adults.

The Importance of Child Protection

Child protection is a fundamental human right, enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. It’s a vital prerequisite for the overall well-being of children and the future prosperity of societies. By protecting children, we not only ensure their physical and mental health but also contribute to the development of resilient, productive adults.

Challenges in Child Protection

Despite global efforts, child protection remains a significant challenge due to factors like poverty, social norms condoning harmful practices, and inadequate legal frameworks. Additionally, conflicts and crises exacerbate the vulnerability of children, making child protection even more critical.

The Role of Society in Child Protection

Society plays a crucial role in child protection. It’s the responsibility of every individual to report instances of child abuse and neglect. Schools and community organizations should implement child protection policies and provide safe environments for children.

In conclusion, child protection is a collective responsibility that requires concerted efforts from individuals, communities, and governments. It’s an investment in the future, ensuring that children grow into healthy, productive adults who can contribute positively to society.

500 Words Essay on Child Protection

Child protection refers to the safeguarding of children from violence, exploitation, abuse, and neglect. This is a global issue that requires the collective effort of individuals, communities, and governments. The importance of child protection cannot be overstated as it directly impacts the physical, emotional, and psychological development of children, shaping the adults they become.

The Scope of Child Protection

Child protection encompasses a wide range of issues. These include physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, neglect, exploitation such as child labor and child trafficking, and violence in the form of bullying or domestic violence. It is not limited to the home environment, but extends to schools, community spaces, and online platforms. With the advent of digital technology, children are now vulnerable to cyberbullying and online predators, expanding the scope of child protection.

Legislation and Policy Frameworks

Numerous international, national, and regional laws and policies have been implemented to protect children. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) is the most universally accepted set of standards for children’s rights. It provides a comprehensive framework for governments to develop legislation and policies focused on child protection. However, the effectiveness of these laws and policies varies significantly across different regions due to factors such as cultural norms, enforcement mechanisms, and economic resources.

The Role of Education

Education plays a crucial role in child protection. Schools should not only provide a safe environment but also equip children with the knowledge and skills to protect themselves. This includes teaching them about their rights, how to identify and report abuse, and how to navigate the digital world safely. Furthermore, education can break the cycle of abuse and exploitation by providing children with opportunities for a better future.

Community Involvement

Child protection is not solely the responsibility of the government or the education sector. The community plays a significant role in creating a safe environment for children. Community members can contribute by being vigilant, reporting suspected abuse, and supporting families in crisis. Community-based organizations can also provide resources and services to vulnerable children and their families.

Child protection is a complex issue that requires a comprehensive approach. It is not enough to merely have laws and policies in place. Effective child protection requires the active involvement of schools, communities, and each individual. It also requires addressing the root causes of child abuse and exploitation, such as poverty and societal norms. As future leaders, it is our responsibility to ensure that every child is protected and has the opportunity to thrive.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on Child Rights
• Essay on Child
• Essay on Child Abuse

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Child protection, every child has the right to live free from violence, exploitation and abuse..

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Overview  |  What we do  |  Reports  |  Data  |  News

Children experience insidious forms of violence, exploitation and abuse. It happens in every country, and in the places children should be most protected – their homes, schools and communities. Violence against children can be physical, emotional or sexual. And in many cases, children suffer at the hands of the people they trust.

Children in humanitarian settings are especially vulnerable. During armed conflict, natural disasters and other emergencies, children may be forced to flee their homes, some torn from their families and exposed to exploitation and abuse along the way. They risk injury and death. They may be recruited by armed groups. Especially for girls and women, the threat of gender-based violence soars.

Harmful cultural practices pose another grave risk in various parts of the world. Hundreds of millions of girls have been subjected to child marriage and female genital mutilation – even though both are internationally recognized human rights violations.

No matter the circumstance, every child has the right to be protected from violence. Child protection systems connect children to vital social services and fair justice systems – starting at birth. They provide care to the most vulnerable, including children uprooted by conflict or disaster; victims of child labour or trafficking; and those who live with disabilities or in alternative care. Protecting children means protecting their physical and psychosocial needs to safeguard their futures. 

UNICEF works in more than 150 countries to protect children from violence, exploitation and abuse. We partner with governments, businesses, civil society organizations and communities to prevent all forms of violence against children and to support survivors. Our efforts strengthen child protection systems to help children access vital social services, from birth through adolescence.

During a humanitarian crisis, we provide leadership and coordination for all actors involved in the response. Our programming focuses on protecting children from explosive weapons and remnants of war; reunifying separated children with their families; releasing and reintegrating children associated with armed groups; preventing and addressing gender-based violence; and safeguarding children from sexual exploitation and abuse. We also work with United Nations partners to monitor and report grave violations of children’s rights in armed conflict.

Alongside communities, we accelerate the elimination of harmful practices, such as child marriage and female genital mutilation.

We also support governments with policy, legislation and regulatory frameworks that give more children access to social services and justice.

Throughout all we do, we listen to young people to ensure their needs drive our work.

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On the 10-year mark of the Chibok abductions, UNICEF urges action to secure children's education in Nigeria

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Writing safeguarding policies and procedures

Children have the right to be protected from harm. If your organisation or group works with children or young people you must have a clear set of guidelines about how you will:

• keep children safe
• respond to child protection concerns.

Your safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures are an important part of protecting children and young people. They must be supported by good governance, health and safety, financial management, staff supervision and management.

This page explains how to write a safeguarding or child protection policy statement that sets out your organisation's commitment to keeping children safe.

What is a safeguarding policy statement?

A safeguarding or child protection policy statement makes it clear what your organisation or group will do to keep children safe.

It should set out:

• your organisation's commitment to protecting all children
• the more detailed policies and procedures your organisation will put in place to keep children safe and respond to child protection concerns.

What are safeguarding and child protection procedures? 

Safeguarding and child protection procedures are detailed guidelines and instructions that support your overarching safeguarding policy statement. They explain the steps that your organisation will take to keep children and young people safe and what to do when there are concerns about a child's safety or wellbeing.

For example, your safeguarding procedures should cover issues like how staff and volunteers should respond to concerns about a child and young person and how you will make sure you recruit the right people to work with children and young people.

You should also ensure that staff and volunteers know what to do if they are concerned about anything happening in a child's life - whether or not it is happening within your organisation. 

Getting started on your safeguarding policy statement

There are different ways to write a safeguarding or child protection statement, but before you put pen to paper it's helpful to think about:

• the potential risks to a child in your organisation
• how someone might raise a concern
• the practicalities of who should be involved in writing the policy statement.

It is also useful to think about all the things that you might already be doing to help make your organisation a place where children and young people can flourish, have positive experiences and stay safe.

Things to consider

• What are the potential risks to children - who may pose a risk? what situations may increase risk?
• How do you make sure the people who work or volunteer for your organisation are suitable to do so?
• What are the different ways someone might raise a concern about a child's wellbeing?
• How should you respond to concerns or allegations of harm that has happened within your organisation?
• How does this overarching policy statement link up with your more detailed child protection procedures?
• How will you make sure everyone involved with your organisation is aware of how to spot and respond to child protection concerns?

> Find out more about best practice for recognising and responding to abuse

Practical tips

• Tailor your policy statement to suit the needs of your organisation.
• Use words and phrases that will mean the most to the group or community.
• Involve people from different parts of the organisation to make sure the policy is relevant for everyone.
• Think about how you can involve children and incorporate their perspective.
• Ask different people in different roles to read the policy statement and feedback to ensure it is accessible to everybody.

Writing a safeguarding and child protection policy statement

Your policy statement should be clear, concise and cover all the information listed below. Aim to keep it to two sides of A4 paper if possible, though you may need more space depending on your organisation's needs and context.

Purpose and aim of the policy statement

Identify the organisation, its purpose and function. Set out the organisation's overarching commitment to keeping children safe.

Scope of the policy statement

Be clear about who the policy applies to. It should cover all children under 18 but are all adults expected to comply with it? Should it just be staff and volunteers who work directly with children? What about those who have occasional contact with children such as a caretaker?

Briefly state the main legislation and guidance that supports the policy statement. Explain how this policy statement links to more detailed child protection policies and procedures.

> Find out more about the child protection system in each UK nation

Policy statement

Set out your organisation's beliefs about the importance of child protection.

• For example, "we believe everyone has a responsibility to promote the welfare of all children and young people, to keep them safe and to practise in a way that protects them".
• Include a statement about equality and a commitment to anti-discriminatory practice. For example "we will give equal priority to keeping all children and young people safe regardless of their age, disability, gender reassignment, race, religion or belief, sex, or sexual orientation".
• Make sure your policy statement recognises that some children are additionally vulnerable because of the impact of discrimination, previous experiences, their level of dependency, communication needs or other issues.

Find more about:

• safeguarding children who come from Black, Asian and minoritised ethnic communities
• safeguarding d/Deaf and disabled children and young people
• safeguarding LGBTQ+ children and young people
• safeguarding children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) .

Explain how, in broad terms, the organisation will meet your commitment to keeping children safe. For example by:

• listening to children and respecting them
• appointing a nominated child protection lead  and a member of the trustee board who takes lead responsibility for safeguarding at the highest level in the organisation
• writing detailed safeguarding and child protection procedures
• making sure all staff and volunteers understand and follow the safeguarding and child protection procedures
• ensuring children, young people and their families know about the organisation's safeguarding and child protection policies and what to do if they have a concern
• building a safeguarding culture where staff, volunteers and children know how they are expected to behave and feel comfortable about sharing concerns.

Supporting documents

You need a set of more detailed policies and procedures which explain the steps adults within your organisation must take to keep children safe. Your policy statement should include a list of these. You can find more details about writing these policies and procedures on the "writing safeguarding policies" tab.

Contact details

Include the names and contact details of the people responsible for safeguarding and child protection in your organisation.

Include the contact details for the NSPCC Helpline and Childline so that people know they can contact us if they need child protection advice, support or reassurance.

Provide the date the policy statement comes into force.

It's important to keep the statement up to date so you should include review dates and make sure the review happens on time.

Your policy statement should be signed and dated by the most senior person in your organisation who has responsibility for safeguarding and child protection.

Example policy statement

> See an example safeguarding and child protection policy statement

> Read the NSPCC's safeguarding and child protection policy (PDF)

Next steps after completing your safeguarding policy statement

When you have completed your overarching safeguarding and child protection policy statement, you need to ensure that all adults and children are aware of, understand and can access your safeguarding policies.

You should consider:

• how you will tell everyone about new or updated policies and any challenges that might arise
• how to ensure your policy is accessible to people with communication difficulties or different language needs. 

Writing safeguarding and child protection procedures

Your overarching safeguarding and child protection policy statement should refer to a set of more detailed policies and procedures. These procedures should outline the steps that must be taken if there are any concerns about a child's or young person's safety and wellbeing.

It is essential that your procedures are clear and easy to follow. Make sure each procedure includes the items below. 

Purpose and aim of the procedure

Every procedure you create should clearly state its aim and purpose and who it applies to. For example, each procedure should be written for everyone who comes into contact with children and young people even if it is not their main role in your organisation. 

Summary of useful information

Include a summary of any information that is relevant. For example, a procedure about responding to concerns about a child's wellbeing could include a description of the different types of abuse (physical, emotional, sexual abuse and neglect) as well as the signs and indicators that might be a cause for concern. 

Clear instructions

Each procedure should include clear steps of the action needed. You could consider using diagrams and flowcharts to help make the steps easy to follow.

If someone is concerned about child's welfare they should tell the nominated child protection lead or their deputy. Any concerns must be kept confidential and should not be discussed with anyone other than the child protection lead, who should make a referral to children's services. Reporting concerns helps children's services build an overall picture of the child's life and the support they or their family may need.

If a child tells you they are experiencing abuse, it’s important to reassure them that they’ve done the right thing in telling you. Make sure they know that abuse is never their fault. Never promise a child that you will keep the things they’re telling you a secret. Explain that you need to share what they’ve told you with someone who will be able to help.

> Find out more about recognising and responding to abuse

What information to record

Ensure the procedure details how, when and what information needs to be recorded. You should also cover who should record this information (for example, your organisation's nominated child protection lead) and where records should be stored .

Contact details 

Make sure the procedure includes contact details for anyone who needs to be informed, including any external agencies and make sure it's clear who is responsible for making any referrals. This should be your organisation's nominated child protection officer.

It is important that staff and volunteers know who to speak to and don't feel they are on their own when dealing with a worrying situation. Parents, children and young people also need to know who to talk to if they are worried. 

Confidentiality

Be clear about confidentiality. Information should only be shared with people who need to know. Make sure your procedures are clear about what should be shared and who with. Remember you must share any concerns you have about a child, even if they ask you not to. 

Ensure your procedures are clear and accessible

Make sure that all adults and children are aware of, understand and can access your safeguarding and child protection procedures. Reading them should be part of your induction processes and training.

> See our Introduction to safeguarding and child protection training

> See our Safeguarding 16 to 25 year olds training

You may need to provide procedures in different languages or in other formats such as Braille or large text. You should also consider whether you need a child-friendly version. Decide in advance how you will tell everyone about any new or updated procedures.

Provide the date the procedures come into force. It's important to keep procedures up to date so you should include review dates and make sure the review happens on time.

What procedures should you have?

When writing your more detailed policies and procedures you should consider all elements of keeping a child or young person safe. You should make sure your procedures cover:

• responding to concerns about a child's welfare
• storing child protection records
• preventing and responding to bullying
• recruiting the right people to volunteer or work with children
• codes of conduct for all staff and volunteers
• managing concerns about or allegations made against staff or volunteers
• managing concerns about or allegations made against a child or young person
• making sure all your activities and events are run safely
• adult to child ratios for supervising children effectively
• taking, storing and sharing photographs and images of children
• keeping children safe online
• whistleblowing and complaints . 

> View our Introductory guide to safeguarding for the voluntary and community sector

Safeguarding and child protection is a continuous process and it’s vital every organisation assesses whether what they’re doing is working.

Our free self-assessment tool provides a step-by-step guide to the review process. The tool can help schools and other organisations:

• identify areas for development
• find advice and resources to help improve policies and practice
• access a bespoke action plan
• update your progress as many times as they like.

Following a clear and proportionate review process can help you can ensure your policies and procedures are up to date and working well.

Making sure your safeguarding policies and procedures are effective

Start using our free self-assessment tool.

Our tool will help you quickly identify areas for development and support you in making any necessary changes.

> Try out our safeguarding and child protection self-assessment tool

Establish who should be involved in the review

The review should be led by your nominated child protection lead. Depending on what you’re reviewing and the size and type of organisation, it may help to form a working group to make sure all relevant people are involved.

> Find out more about the role of the nominated child protection lead

Consider what you need to review

Start by identifying all the written policies and procedures which need reviewing, before moving on to other related systems and processes such as training, recruitment and governance.

Agree criteria and ratings for the review

Decide how you will you assess your safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures consistently. Whatever rating system you use, it needs to be clear and measurable.

Identify any internal or external changes

Evaluate any changes that have occurred since the last review, both within the organisation and externally.

Internal changes that may impact child safeguarding and child protection practices could include changes to personnel, organisational structure or size, who your organisation works with, or how you work with them.

Policies and procedures may also need to change to reflect external changes, such as new guidance, emerging technologies or societal changes.

It’s important to stay up to date with the latest child protection and safeguarding legislation and guidance to stay aligned with the legal requirements and standards.

> Keep up to date with the latest child protection and safeguarding news by signing up to our CASPAR newsletter

Check files and paperwork

Performing a file audit will help you assess whether current safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures are being followed.

For example, were vetting and barring checks done in a timely manner and did staff and volunteers receive safeguarding training when they started?

Talk about your safeguarding measures and gather feedback

Speak to everyone involved with your organisation, including employees, volunteers, parents and carers, and children themselves.

Conduct surveys, interviews, or focus groups to gather their perspectives on the effectiveness of the current policies and procedures and any areas for improvement.

Assess policy effectiveness

Review your findings and evaluate the existing policies and procedures against current best practices, legal requirements, and industry standards. Are there any gaps, weaknesses, or areas where policies may need revision or enhancement?

If there have been safeguarding incidents, are there lessons to be learnt from how they were dealt with?

> Create a tailored action plan using our self-assessment tool

Update policies and procedures

Incorporate the findings from the review process into the safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures.

Organise training and raise awareness

Develop a plan to ensure that all relevant individuals within the organisation are aware of the updated policy and understand their roles and responsibilities. Training should be ongoing to ensure that all employees understand their responsibilities, recognise signs of abuse or neglect, and know how to respond appropriately.

Set regular review dates

Schedule regular reviews of the child safeguarding policies and procedures, typically at least once a year or whenever significant changes or a local incident occurs which highlights that a review is needed.

Make sure your plans are achievable and you're able to properly assess what's working well and what isn't.

> Get tailored help with reviewing your safeguarding policies and procedures through our safeguarding and child protection consultancy service

Legislation and guidance

Each UK nation has its own child protection legislation and guidance.

• Child protection legislation and guidance in England
• Child protection legislation and guidance in Northern Ireland
• Child protection legislation and guidance in Scotland
• Child protection legislation and guidance in Wales
• Key guidance for schools in the UK

As part of this, there is guidance setting out the safeguarding and child protection responsibilities of organisations and groups.

In England, the Department for Education (DfE) provides the key statutory guidance for anyone working with children and young people: Working together to safeguard children (DfE, 2023). This sets out how organisations should work together to keep children safe. Chapter 4: Organisational responsibilities sets out the requirements for voluntary, charity, social enterprise, faith-based organisations and private sectors. 

The DfE’s guidance What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused (PDF) describes the actions to take if you think a child is being abused or neglected. (DfE, 2015)

The DfE has published a voluntary code of practice for out-of-school settings . It includes advice on safeguarding and child protection, staff suitability, and governance (DfE, 2020).

If your organisation is a registered charity, you must also follow the Charity Commission’s guidance.

> Find out more about the safeguarding legislation and guidance for charities

Northern Ireland

In Northern Ireland, the Department of Health has published Co-operating to safeguard children and young people in Northern Ireland (Department of Health, 2017). Section 3.8 sets out how voluntary, charitable, faith and community-based organisations should contribute to keep children safe.

The Revised regional core child protection policies and procedures for Northern Ireland explain what actions people who work with children should take if they have concerns about a child or young person’s welfare (Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland, 2021).

If your organisation is a registered charity, you must also follow the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland’s guidance.

In Scotland, the National guidance for child protection provides a framework for anyone who might face child protection issues (Scottish Government, 2023). This includes third sector organisations (voluntary and community organisations, charities, social enterprises, co-operatives and mutuals).

If your organisation is a registered charity, you must also follow guidance from the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.

The Welsh Government has published Working together to safeguard people , a suite of guidance and codes of practice that sets out how agencies and practitioners should work together to safeguard children (Welsh Government, 2019). 

Volume 5 (PDF)  focuses on handling individual cases to protect children at risk.

The Working together to safeguard people: code of safeguarding practice sets out safeguarding expectations for all individuals, groups and organisations providing activities or services to children and adults in Wales (Welsh Government, 2022).

The Wales Safeguarding Procedures provide a framework for how child protection referrals, actions and plans should be carried out (Wales Safeguarding Procedures Project Board, 2020).

References and resources

Department for Education (DfE) (2020) Keeping children safe in out-of-school settings: code of practice . [Accessed 25/11/2021].

Department for Education (DfE) (2015) What to do if you’re worried a child is being abused: advice for practitioners (PDF) . London: HM Government.

Department for Education (DfE) (2023) Working together to safeguard children 2023: a guide to multi-agency working to help, protect and promote the welfare of children . [Accessed 15/12/2023].

Department of Health (2017) Co-operating to safeguard children and young people in Northern Ireland . [Accessed 25/11/2021].

Safeguarding Board for Northern Ireland (SBNI) (2021) Revised regional core child protection policies and procedures for Northern Ireland . [Accessed 25/11/2021].

Scottish Government (2023) National guidance for child protection in Scotland . [Accessed 20/11/2023].

Wales Safeguarding Procedures Project Board (2020)   Wales Safeguarding Procedures [Accessed 25/11/2021].

Welsh Government (2019)  Working together to safeguard people: volume 5: handling individual cases to protect children at risk (PDF) . Cardiff: Welsh Government

Welsh Government (2021) Safeguarding guidance . [Accessed 25/11/2021].

Welsh Government (2022) Working together to safeguard people: code for safeguarding practice . [Accessed 03/02/2022].

If a child or young person needs confidential help and advice after an image of them has been shared online, direct them to Childline. Calls to 0800 1111 are free and children can also contact Childline online.

You can also download or order Childline posters and wallet cards .

Our elearning courses can help develop your understanding of how to protect children from abuse:

• Child protection in sport
• Introduction to safeguarding and child protection
• Protecting children in entertainment
• Safeguarding 16 to 25 year olds
• Safer recruitment .

Related NSPCC resources

You may also be interested in the following NSPCC Learning resources:

• Safeguarding and child protection self-assessment tool
• Introductory guide to safeguarding and child protection for the voluntary and community sector
• Recognising and responding to abuse
• Protecting children from abuse in schools: roles and responsibilities
• Dropping off and picking up before and after school
• Photography and sharing images guidance
• Protecting children from abuse by someone in a position of trust or authority
• Managing allegations of abuse made against an adult
• Managing allegations of abuse made against a child
• Online safety and social media
• Safer activities and events

Audit your safeguarding

Use our free online self-assessment tool to review and improve your organisation’s safeguarding arrangements.

Safer activities

Read our guide to ensure children and young people are kept safe during events and day trips.

Child protection consultancy

Our expert education safeguarding consultants can work with you to identify clear steps your school can take to help keep children safe.

Use our example to get started

Need help writing an overarching safeguarding policy statement tailored to your organisation? 

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42 Protecting Children in the Philippines: A System-focused Overview of Policy and Practice

Steven Roche, College of Health and Human Sciences, Charles Darwin University, Australia.

Florence Flores-Pasos, College of Social Work and Community Development (CSWCD), University of the Philippines, Philippines.

• Published: 22 March 2023
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This chapter explains the policies and practices of child protection in the Philippines. While the country is experiencing rapid economic, social, and political transformations, there is increasing international awareness of the need for children to be protected from neglect and abuse, particularly in circumstances of significant poverty, inequality, and deprivation. Filipino children experience a strong sense of familial belonging and community connectedness, with a high degree of social and cultural significance placed on the family. However, maltreatment and exploitation are the core risks to the Filipino youth, which are followed by other risks such as child labour, child trafficking, extra-judicial killings, and natural disasters.

Introduction

The Philippines is experiencing rapid economic, social, and political change and the challenges that come with such transformation are confounded by relatively low levels of social assistance and the weakening of traditional social support structures ( Asia Development Bank, 2013 ; Chan et al., 2014 ; Curato, 2015 , 2017 ). At the same time, there is increasing international awareness of the need for children to be protected from neglect and abuse, and to grow up in safe and stable environments ( Price-Robertson et al., 2014 ), particularly in circumstances of significant poverty and deprivation such as in the Philippines ( Philippines Statistics Authority [PSA] & UNICEF, 2015 ).

Child protection “systems” are receiving increasing international attention in preventing and responding to child maltreatment, yet few studies have explored the Philippines’ approaches to child protection, nor related these to system frameworks. In response, this chapter presents current policy settings and approaches to child protection in the Philippines. First, it provides an overview of the Philippines and the context of the lives of children and their families. This is followed by insights into the core risks to child maltreatment in the Philippines, including an analysis of national social policy and governance arrangements. Then, utilizing Wessells’ (2015) “top-down,” “bottom-up,” and “middle-out” framework for child protection systems in developing contexts, we provide an overview of child protection approaches in the Philippines, and in doing so, identify its flaws and areas for policy development. This chapter assists researchers, policymakers, and welfare sectors to gain a more comprehensive overview of child protection practices in the Philippines.

The Context of Child Maltreatment in the Philippines

The Philippines is a nation state in southeast Asia, made up of an archipelago of more than 7,000 islands and geographically divided into three main island groupings of Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. The country has a population of over 100 million people ( United Nations Development Programme [UNDP], 2016 ), with around 36.6 million (36.6% of the total population) children under the age of 18 ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 , p. 7). The population is growing with a fertility rate (births per woman) of 2.96, one of the highest of countries in southeast Asia ( World Bank, 2017b ), and is split evenly between regional and urban areas ( Asian Development Bank, 2013 ).

The Philippines’ long colonial history strongly impacts its make-up today. Spanish colonization brought disparate islands with varied languages, histories, and cultures together into a nation presided over by a semi-feudal society dominated by landowners, the Catholic Church, and the upper class ( Yu, 2006 ). Later, the United States of America’s control between 1898 and 1946 left behind a collection of political and cultural institutions that continue today ( Francia, 2010 ). Now a democratic presidential republic, the Philippines exhibits the formal features of electoral democracy; however, it is argued that this fails to translate into meaningful democratic functioning and sustained democratic reforms ( Curato, 2015 ), and is hampered by intractable oligarchic structures and dysfunctional political institutions ( Curato, 2017 ). Emerging from these governance conditions is a vibrant civil society with the third largest number of non-governmental organizations in the global south, and the densest network of civil society groups in the world ( Curato, 2015 ), as well as a neoliberal economic orientation that pursues foreign investment and public-private partnerships ( Curato, 2017 ).

The Lives of Children in the Philippines

Children in the Philippines experience a strong sense of familial belonging and community connectedness, with a high degree of social and cultural importance placed on the family ( Bessell, 2009 ). The institution of the family is highly important in the lives of Filipino people, defined by loyalty, sacrifice, and affection, and providing economic, social, and emotional support ( Asis et al., 2004 ). Family membership is expansive, involving extended relatives and strong kinship ties, and is characterized by reciprocal exchange and mutual assistance ( Asis et al., 2004 ; Madianou, 2012 ). This is reflected in the Philippines’ comparatively high scores in measures of subjective well-being, based on strong family and peer relationships ( Lau & Bradshaw, 2010 ).

Families are typically large in the Philippines due to a range of factors. Teen birth rates have increased in the last five years ( UNICEF, 2016 ) while 54% of all pregnancies in the Philippines are unintended ( Chiu, 2013 ), which has much to do with limited access to contraception and the illegality of abortion. To combat this, reproductive health legislation was implemented in 2014 that provides free contraception to poor communities, and provides sex education to children and young people ( Gulland, 2014 ), reducing barriers to access to sexual and reproductive health care and services ( Chiu, 2013 ). The impact of these programs on birth rates is yet to be determined.

Contemporary family dynamics are continually being reshaped by 2.2 million overseas Filipino workers, who are the parents of between 4 and 6 million children, and frequently leave their children in various forms of alternate parental or extra-familial care ( Department of Justice [DOJ], 2012 ). Children growing up apart from their mother or father are changing care environments, family relationships, and functioning, as well as parental roles and capacities ( Asis et al., 2004 ; Parrenas, 2005 ), and can be viewed as a product of the structural contexts of families’ lives in the Philippines.

The Structural Context of Children’s Lives

The lives and experiences of children and their families vary significantly across the Philippines due to significant levels of inequality and poverty, generated by the interaction of social, political, economic, and historical forces ( Yu, 2013 ). Substantive improvements to poverty and inequality have not been achieved by recent governments ( Curato, 2017 ), despite consistently high economic growth in the last decade, including gross domestic product annual growth at 6.9% in 2016 ( World Bank, 2017a ). Inequality has increased since 1994 ( World Bank, 2015 ), and the number of people living below the poverty line expanded by approximately 2 million people since 1991 ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ), detailing entrenched levels for the last 25 years.

A more in-depth measure, the 2016 United Nations Human Development Index (HDI), which incorporates indicators of Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, as well as measures of life expectancy and education, ranks the Philippines 116th out of 188 countries ( UNDP, 2017 ). In addition, a comparative study investigating child well-being in a range of countries in the Pacific Rim found that the Philippines ranked lowest overall, and last on multidimensional measures across domains of well-being, including material well-being, health, education, risk, and safety ( Lau & Bradshaw, 2010 ). Data from 2009 identified that 6.5 million children live in homes without electricity, and 4.1 million children obtain water from an unsafe source ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ). Further, 1.4 million children live in informal settlements and 250,000 experience deprivation of shelter, both strong indicators of insecure tenancy, lack of infrastructure and basic services, and an environment conducive to social problems ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ). This has direct ramifications for children’s education with 1.46 million primary school aged children not attending school, among the highest number of any country in the world ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ).

Impact of Structural Conditions on Children

There is clear evidence that a vast number of children in the Philippines face a multitude of difficulties relating to poverty and inequality, which can impact their safety and well-being. In these circumstances, children and families have fewer resources and capacities to cope with risks and fewer social protections ( Gabel, 2012 ; Myers & Bourdillon, 2012a ; Pells, 2012 ). Childhood poverty and long-term stressful experiences can have a lifelong impact on children’s social, emotional, physical, and neurological development, also leaving children vulnerable to exploitation and maltreatment ( Gabel, 2012 ). Lachman and colleagues (2002) describe the impact of inequality on families as “extra-familial structural abuse,” a pervasive threat for children in the global south that is a result of international structures such as poverty, inequality, and global debt, the outcomes of which negate many efforts to reduce child maltreatment.

Family life is characterized by insecurity and poverty for many. Indicators of severe disadvantage beyond income and inequality provide details of child deprivation and the lived experience of children living in poverty in the Philippines, with many deprivations overlapping. A comprehensive report jointly authored by the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) and the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) details multiple indicators of child poverty in the Philippines ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ). Using 2009 data, the PSA and UNICEF (2015) detail that approximately 13.4 million (36%) children below the age of 18 were determined “income poor,” with these families unable to meet the basic needs of children and had an income less than the predetermined poverty threshold of US$355 per person. The incidence of poverty among children is higher in rural areas, with three in four children “income poor,” and 5.9 million children living below the “food poverty line,” while one in five children between the age of zero and five is underweight for their age ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ). These are clear threats to children’s well-being that can impact children’s development, and leave them vulnerable to maltreatment, exploitation, and other dangers.

Core Risks to Children and Young People in the Philippines: Maltreatment and Exploitation

The nature and incidence of child maltreatment in the philippines.

While the Philippine Department of Justice states that increasing numbers of Filipino children are victims of various forms of abuse, exploitation and violence ( DOJ, 2012 ), there is an absence of reliable data on child maltreatment in the Philippines ( Madrid et al., 2013 ), particularly recent official data ( DOJ, 2012 ). The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) managed a total of 7,182 child abuse cases in 2007, the most recent officially published figure ( DOJ, 2012 ), a figure likely to reflect just a fraction of cases that meet the Philippines’ legislative definition of child maltreatment. The Department of Justice estimates four to six million children are without parental care or at risk of losing parental care, between 60,000 and 100,000 children are prostituted, and a quarter of a million are either living or working on the streets ( DOJ, 2012 ). However, a systematic review of peer-reviewed research on child maltreatment and policy responses in the Philippines indicates varying levels of robust evidence of child maltreatment ( Roche, 2017 ).

Emotional and psychological abuse is the most common form of maltreatment in the Philippines ( Ramiro et al., 2010 ). This is most related to children’s exposure to family violence which can impact on the psychosocial well-being of children. In the Philippines, domestic and family violence is widespread ( Jeyaseelan et al., 2004 ) and a major concern ( Sarmiento et al., 2017 ). For example, Mandal and Hindin (2013) found that as children, 44% of females and 47% of males in the Philippines had witnessed physical violence between their parents. Hassan and colleagues (2004) identified that intimate partner violence was experienced by 21.2% of participants in a Filipino community ( Hassan et al., 2004 ). Having an impact on children in the home, Ansara and Hindin (2009) found that nearly 26% of women in their study had either perpetrated or experienced a physically aggressive act with their partner in the last year, while more generally, Ramiro and colleagues (2010) found that psychological and emotional abuse is high in the Philippines, experienced by 22.8% of children. Mandal and Hindin (2015) also identify the intergenerational transmission of family violence in the Philippines, suggesting the culturally entrenched nature of these practices.

Research on the physical abuse of children in the Philippines varies in its findings. While Ramiro and colleagues (2010) found physical abuse in only 1.3% of their sample, as noted above, research has identified higher rates of family violence. Children’s exposure to family violence is now accepted as a form of emotional and psychological abuse in research and policy ( Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2015 ). Fehringer and Hindin (2009) found prevalence of partner violence perpetration was 55.8% for female and 25.1% for male participants, and that approximately half of participants witnessed their parents or caretakers physically hurt one another in their childhood. In their study, “pushing, grabbing or shoving,” “throwing objects,” and “hitting” were the most common forms of physical violence ( Fehringer & Hindin, 2009 ). In a sample of Filipino mothers, 21.2% had experienced physical intimate partner violence across their lifetime, most commonly “slapping” and “hitting” ( Hassan et al., 2004 ).

Studies identify high rates of physical abuse relating to punishment and discipline. Sanapo and Nakamura (2011) found physical punishment among 49.7% of their sample of sixth-grade participants, and Runyan and colleagues (2010) discovered that 83% of their sample experienced high levels of “moderate” physical discipline, and 9.9% high levels of “harsh” discipline. Sarmiento and colleagues (2017) reveal that four out of five young Filipino adults experienced minor physical violence during childhood, and one in four severe physical violence. In a large survey of children and young people, the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC) and UNICEF (2016) identified 66.3% had experienced physical violence during childhood, most commonly relating to corporal punishment in the home. Corporal punishment remains highly tolerated and an accepted cultural practice in the Philippines ( DOJ, 2012 ; Save the Children, 2008 ), and current law allows parents to discipline children for character formation and obedience ( Daly et al., 2015 ; Sarmiento et al., 2017 ).

The neglect of children is widespread in the Philippines ( Ramiro et al., 2010 ; Lansford et al., 2015 ). Ramiro and colleagues (2010) reveal that 22.5% of a general population sample in the Philippines had experiences of physical neglect as children. However, this has much to do with high levels of material deprivation, such as limited access to food, clean water, and medical care, as well as experiences of child labor and a lack of education, which are all typical measures of neglect.

There is limited research that has examined the extent and characteristics of sexual abuse in the Philippines. However, Ramiro and colleagues’ (2010) study found that 6% of girls and 4.5% of boys under the age of 18 had experienced sexual abuse. Using broader definitions, the CWC and UNICEF (2016) found in their sample that 17.1% of children aged between 13 and 18 had experienced sexual violence. This is an area that requires significantly more research.

Other Risks to Children in the Philippines

Children in the Philippines also face serious risks to their safety resulting from wide-ranging concerns, including child labor, commercial sexual exploitation, and extra-judicial killings, as well as natural disasters and armed conflict ( Daly et al., 2015 ; Mapp & Gabel, 2017 ). A 2011 survey found that 3.2 million children aged 5 to 17 were engaged in child labor, half of whom work in “hazardous” work environments ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 , p. 72). In total, 7.5% of 5–14-year-olds work in the Philippines ( US Department of Labor, 2016 ). Poverty is a crucial element of child labor in the Philippines, with families more likely to turn to child labor earnings when in financial crisis ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Poverty and family breakdown also force children into living on the street, a group estimated to number approximately 1.5 million ( Njord et al., 2010 ).

Children in the Philippines are exposed to high levels of conflict and natural disasters. A recent example includes Typhoon Haiyan, which hit the Visayan Islands in 2013 and killed or left missing more than 7,000 people ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Threats to children in disaster and conflict contexts often involve separation from family and parents, displacement, exposure to violence and abuse, and lack of basic services and supports ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Additionally, conflict in the Mindanao region between the government and Islamic separatists, claimed over 120,000 lives up until 2012 ( UNICEF, 2016 ), and continues to have a significant impact on civilians including children ( Economist, 2017 ). The CWC and UNICEF (2016) found that 2.6% of their research participants had been displaced by war, ethnic conflict, or crime.

Child trafficking, and the commercial sexual exploitation of children via prostitution or child pornography is a growing phenomenon in the Philippines ( DOJ, 2012 ). The Department of Justice (2012) estimates that there are between 60,000 and 100,000 children involved in prostitution; most are girls aged between 13 and 18 years old. Online child sexual exploitation has increased significantly in scale, relying on ongoing poverty and the advancements in, and increased access to, information and communications technology ( Terre Des Hommes, 2016 ). A report by international non-government organization Terre Des Hommes (2016) estimates that tens of thousands of children are victims of online child sexual exploitation, often in the form of webcam child sex tourism, and that these numbers are increasing rapidly, despite updated legislation such as the anti-trafficking in Persons Act, Cybercrime Prevention Act, and the Anti-Child Pornography Law ( Terre Des Hommes, 2016 ). This phenomenon is yet is be investigated in-depth, although recent ethnographic work provides important insights into victim and community perceptions and the social circumstances in which online sexual exploitation and abuse occur in Manila, noting high levels of victimization among teenage girls, strong financial motivations, and various social and psychological harms ( Ramiro et al., 2019 ).

The Duterte government’s (2016–2022) violent campaign to reduce illicit drug use has posed significant threats to children and their well-being, and provides important insights into the rule of law and capacities of the criminal justice system ( Cousins, 2016 ). President Duterte’s administration endorsed members of the public, vigilantes as well as police to murder drug users and dealers, outside of the criminal justice system ( Teehankee, 2016 ; Thompson, 2016 ), even providing financial rewards to police for every person killed ( Coronel, 2017 ). This has resulted in over 12,000 deaths so far ( Human Rights Watch, 2018 ) and left many children orphaned or killed, including the high profile case of a 17-year-old school boy who was murdered in cold blood by police ( De Castro & Mogato, 2017 ).

Clearly children in the Philippines navigate numerous threats to their safety and well-being in a complex setting involving a unique combination of structural, social, and environmental factors. Poverty and inequality leave children and families vulnerable to abuse and neglect within cultural and social settings in which abuse and neglect, in their multiple forms, occur, requiring a range of government and social policy responses.

Governance and Social Policy in the Philippines

The social policy context of the philippines.

The family unit takes primary responsibility for its own welfare, with the state playing a secondary role in providing social assistance in relation to education, healthcare, housing, and social assistance ( Yu, 2013 ). Numerous national and international non-government organizations also provide welfare programs, in part a legacy of the international goodwill and aid following the fall of the Marcos dictatorship ( Yu, 2013 ). Since the 1980s, NGOs have worked to privilege the role of civil society, and in effect, minimize the role of the state in providing social welfare ( Yu, 2013 ). International NGOs provide much support for the health care, education, and basic needs of children and families, and financial agencies such as the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank provide programs to address poverty ( Yu, 2013 ).

Characteristics of welfare provision are evolving since the national government’s introduction of a near universal conditional cash transfer program called Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Building Bridges for the Filipino Family Program) ( Kim & Yoo, 2015 ). Progressively introduced from 2007, it acts as a financial safety net for poor families and was estimated to cover 21% of the poor population in 2016 ( Asian Development Bank, 2015 ). The program was designed with technical and financial support from the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Australian Agency for International Development ( Kim & Yoo, 2015 ). It distributes money to poor families ( Rawlings & Rubio, 2005 ), and has conditional behavioral requirements built into it that develop human capital, health, and education outcomes through a “social contract” in which participants must have their children attend school, get immunized and receive health checks in exchange for financial assistance ( Kim & Yoo, 2015 ). In 2017, nearly 4.4 million households participated in Pantawid ( Department of Social Welfare and Development, 2015 ; House of Representatives, 2017 ), taking up approximately 90% of the social welfare budget of the DSWD ( Kim & Yoo, 2015 ). However, there is growing uncertainty as to how the program will continue to be financed after the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank cease funding loans to support the program after 2019 and 2022 respectively ( Pasion, 2017 ).

Decentralized Governance

Government social policy initiatives and programs, including those relating to child protection, are strongly impacted by the decentralization of government structures and policies in the Philippines. Decentralization has seen the national government to devolve spending, taxation and borrowing powers to various levels of local government ( Daly et al., 2015 ), brought about by the enactment of the Local Government Code in 1991, which articulates areas of responsibility for local governments, including health and social services, and education ( UNICEF, 2016 ).

Seventeen regions make up the decentralized governance of the Philippines, and receive 17% of total government expenditure playing a central role in delivering basic services such as health, education and housing ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Primary national administrative divisions are divided into 79 provinces, 115 cities, 1499 municipalities, and more than 42,000 barangays ( Daly et al., 2015 ; UNICEF, 2016 ). Barangays are the smallest administrative division of government in the Philippines. Akin to villages, each barangay is led by an elected council and receives direct funding from local government units (a widely used term in the Philippines that denotes the various levels of non-national government) but retains a significant amount of their own autonomy ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Barangays are an important mechanism of governance, having a major impact on people’s lives, and are guided in part by the national government who provide technical assistance and set standards ( Daly et al., 2015 ), while local government delivers all health and social welfare programs, including funding at a barangay level ( Daly et al., 2015 ). The capacities and resources of regions, provinces, municipalities, and barangays vary significantly due to high levels of resource and governance disparity between local government units ( Daly et al., 2015 ).

Dominant Ideologies in Philippine Social Policy

A significant welfare policy orientation of the Philippines relates to the “productivist” nature of the Philippine welfare state. Consecutive governments have prioritized accelerating the productive elements of society and promoting economic goals, and left social policy underdeveloped and subordinate to economic growth ( Holliday, 2000 ; Choi, 2012 ). The Asian Development Bank’s “social protection index,” a measure of social protection policies that reduce poverty, finds the Philippines comparatively low on social assistance ( Asian Development Bank, 2013 ), indicating low de-commodification, the standard of living that is achieved by citizens outside of market-based activity ( Esping-Andersen, 1990 ). At the same time, high economic growth objectives are supported by government, exemplified by labor exportation and the centrality of remittances from migrant workers to the Filipino economy ( Asis, 2015 ). Within this system, welfare provision relies on social rights flowing from high economic growth ( Choi, 2012 ).

Understandings of welfare in the Philippines tacitly accept that inequality and disadvantage are a fixture of Philippine society, while social policy places large amounts of responsibility on individuals for their own welfare, a result of four centuries of colonial influence, and the view that hierarchical social order and inequality is inevitable, with welfare conceptualized as minimalist and functionalist (Yu, 2006 , 2013 ). Understandings of welfare throughout Spanish colonial intervention centered on Catholic views of fatalism, the virtues of suffering, and poverty as a punishment for sin, while American colonial involvement propagated the view that social problems originated in individuals’ lack of education, regressive values, and a lack of modern thinking and practices ( Yu, 2006 ). These colonial interventions frequently saw welfare provided under the auspices of religious orders, rather than government, in the form of institutions such as hospitals, orphanages, and asylums ( Yu, 2006 ).

These orientations to welfare and social policy influence child protection policy and are compounded by the low social protection conditions across the Philippines in which the state takes limited responsibility for providing social services, or protecting children from unequal life outcomes that are a result of their social position. The Philippines mainly relies on the free market, and views employment rather than assistance from government as the desired assistance, with families or NGOs providing crisis assistance. This has implications for the official responses to child maltreatment, the state’s relationship and role with children and their families, and the child protection system that it engenders.

Conceptualizing Child Protection Systems in the Global South

System understandings of child protection have emerged as the most accepted conceptual approach to improving child protection in the global south ( Connolly et al., 2014 ). They focus on combining policy, programs, and activities that aim to prevent, respond, and resolve the abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence experienced by children into a coherent structure ( Pells, 2012 ; Wessells et al., 2012 ). Child protection systems in the global south need to be conceptualized as distinct to those in high-income contexts, as they typically take a different form, rely on different actors, and need to be responsive to a greater diversity of risks to children and more diverse population groups ( Connolly et al., 2014 ). Low-income countries frequently have limited structures to implement strategies and approaches to protect children ( Connolly et al., 2014 ), and often political and economic circumstances negate attempts to alleviate the difficult situations of children through policy intervention, in circumstances where poverty significantly impacts on the likelihood of child maltreatment ( Myers & Bourdillon, 2012a ). These efforts are frequently beset by a disconnect between formal child protection systems and local child protection practices, relating to problems of access, as well as social and cultural norms, and general perceptions of formal systems ( Wessells et al., 2012 ). For these reasons, the structure of child protection systems in the global south vary, and often focus on integrating the protective potential of community groups and families, and deploy a system that is more balanced between actors than typically “top-down” approaches in the global north.

It is generally considered that the key components of a child protection “system” include a statutory child protection agency, a process to report suspected cases of child abuse and neglect, and a system that provides alternate care for children at high risk ( Bromfield & Higgins, 2005 ). To achieve these functions, a system can incorporate informal actors such as children, families, communities, and leaders, as well as formal actors such as state and multinational actors, government social welfare workers, police, and magistrates ( Wulcyn et al., 2009 ; Wessells, 2015 ). These actors are supported by laws, policies, and regulations that traverse welfare, education, health, and justice sectors, and combine into a larger structure ( UNICEF, 2016 ; Jenkins et al., 2017 ).

Focusing on developing contexts, Wessells (2015) highlights the importance of strengthening and balancing child protection systems across three conceptual domains; “top-down,” “middle-out” and “bottom-up.” “Top-down” approaches include the national government providing laws, policies, and capacities relating to child protection, while “middle-out” approaches comprise local government working to embed child protection agendas in regional functions of government and power ( Wessells, 2015 ). “Bottom-up” approaches involve community actions at the community level, involving identifying and building on community strengths and actors, as well as community–government collaboration ( Wessels, 2015 ). Community-based child protection mechanisms appear in contexts of limited capacity for formal protection, and are commonly comprised of local level groups or processes that respond to or prevent child maltreatment ( Wessells et al., 2012 ; Wessells, 2015 ). Their strength within child protection systems is that they are located where children and families live, and in the contexts in which children are exposed to risks. This chapter now describes and evaluates the Philippines’ child protection system against these three areas of child protection activity. Across each domain we describe the major actors and functions of the child protection system, as well as provide critique, highlighting key questions over the coverage and funding of child protection programs and activities, as well as the systems’ coherence and effectiveness.

Approaches to Child Protection in the Philippines: Top-down, Middle-out and Bottom-up

Top-down approaches to child protection: definitions, legislation, and government agencies.

A systemic “top-down” approach to child protection incorporates national legislation, policies, and capacities relating to preventing child maltreatment ( Wessells, 2015 ). The Philippines exhibits a range of “top-down” approaches to protecting children. A clear focus relates to the recognition of children’s rights. The Philippines ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1990, and later ratified two optional protocols pertaining to the involvement of children in armed conflict, and the sale of children ( DOJ, 2012 ). Domestically, the basic premise of the rights of children was first established in the “Child and Youth Welfare Code” (Presidential Decree 603) of 1974, which codifies laws on the rights of children and articulates a number of rights of the child, as well as promoting their well-being and development ( The LawPhil Project, 2018b ).

Legislation and policy relies on the Philippines’ definition of child maltreatment. The definition largely mirrors the World Health Organization’s (WHO) understanding of child maltreatment. The WHO articulates four distinct classifications of child maltreatment: physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional and psychological abuse and neglect ( WHO, 2006 , p. 10). The Republic Act (No 7610), titled the “Special protection of children against abuse, exploitation and discrimination act”, understands child abuse as “the infliction of physical or psychological injury, cruelty to, or neglect, sexual abuse or exploitation of a child” ( Saplala, 2007 , p. 88). The same legislation defines children as “persons below 18 years old or those over but are unable to take care of themselves from abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation or discrimination because of physical or mental disability or condition” ( CWC, 2000 , p. 11). This suggests that children are viewed as vulnerable, and childhood a period of incompetence in which special protection and adult intervention is required ( Bessell, 2009 ).

To operationalize this definition, the Philippines has a strong legal basis for the protection of children. The 1992 “Special Protection of Children Against Abuse, Exploitation and Discrimination Act” (RA 7610) articulates the Philippines’ legislative response to child abuse and neglect. It declares that it is the:

policy of the State to provide special protection to children from all forms of abuse, neglect, cruelty, exploitation and discrimination and other conditions, prejudicial to their development; provide sanctions for their commission and carry out a program for prevention and deterrence of and crisis intervention in situations of child abuse, exploitation and discrimination. ( LawPhil Project, 2018a , Article 1, section 2)

This legislation clearly identifies the state’s central role in child protection activities and interventions, based on criteria relating to children’s development as well as child maltreatment. Further, article one of this act articulates the state’s responsibility to protect and rehabilitate children in response to child maltreatment.

The State shall intervene on behalf of the child when the parent, guardian, teacher or person having care or custody of the child fails or is unable to protect the child against abuse, exploitation and discrimination. ( LawPhil Project, 2018a , Article 1, section 2)

Article 2 of the same legislation commits to responding to child maltreatment through providing prevention, deterrence and crisis intervention ( LawPhil Project, 2018a , Article 2, section 4). Other legislation relating to child protection, passed between 2003 and 2009 pertain to people-trafficking, child labor, violence against women and children, and anti-pornography acts ( CWC, 2011 ; DOJ, 2012 ), amounting to a range of robust and well-defined legislation seeking to protect children from a range of potential maltreatment. In 2022, the Philippines raised the age of sexual consent from 12 to 16 years of age. Previously, the Philippines had one of the lowest ages of sexual consent internationally ( Child Wise, 2009 ), which impacted on the protection of children from abuse, and had major social and health consequences ( Philippine Commission on Women, 2019 ).

National Government Agencies Involved in the Protection of Children

A cluster of national government agencies provide oversight for a range of child protection related functions that cascade into regional and provincial contexts. The Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC) operates as the principal agency for children’s issues and policy in the Philippines, observing children’s rights and coordinating policy for children in the Philippines ( CWC, 2016 ). Its role is to coordinate, implement, and enforce all laws relating to the promotion of child and youth welfare, develop policies and guidelines, and oversee the monitoring of formal child protection mechanisms ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Despite this role, its capacity to achieve these goals is heavily questioned, with limited funding, few policy and research publications, and a low national profile ( Yangco, 2010 ; UNICEF, 2016 ). In 2018, the CWC is expected to receive an annual budget of 39.9 million Philippine pesos (approximately US$800,000) ( House of Representatives, 2017 ).

The Department of Social Welfare and Development is the primary welfare agency of the national government. It sets standards and regulations, accredits and guides organizations and institutions involved in social welfare activities, and monitors the performance of organizations ( Save the Children, 2011 ; Department of Social Welfare and Development, 2015 ). Both government and non-government agencies provide child protection responses in the Philippines. The DSWD also both provides and regulates residential care, as well as domestic and international adoption ( PSA & UNICEF, 2015 ).

A host of committees and governance groups provide direction and support to child protection efforts, although their level of influence is unclear. The Committee for the Special Protection of Children is responsible for investigating and prosecuting child maltreatment related cases, as well as receiving reports from its member agencies relating to child protection issues, and promoting the legal protection of children more broadly ( Save the Children, 2011 ; DOJ, 2012 , 2017 ). The Committee also recently designed a protocol for the case management of victims of child maltreatment for use across multiple welfare contexts, advising on reporting and case management procedures ( DOJ, 2013 ). The committee is co-chaired by representatives from DSWD and has multiple members across various government departments ( DOJ, 2017 ).

Other inter-agency councils aim to respond to various child maltreatment related issues in the country that concern children and attempt to connect government with non-government actors. The National Child Labor Committee advocates for reductions in child labor. There is also an Inter-Agency Council on Violence Against Women and Children ( Philippine Commission on Women, 2017 ), while others relate to juvenile justice, child pornography, and human trafficking. These committees reflect the governance mechanisms of child protection policy and programs in the Philippines and its top-down mechanisms for protecting children.

National Policy Documents Relating to Child Protection

Government agencies have produced policy documents that describe policy approaches and ambitions relating to children’s welfare, development and protection. The most central child protection document is produced by the Committee for the Special Protection of Children, titled “The Comprehensive Programme on Child Protection 2012-2016” (CPCP) ( DOJ, 2012 ). It identifies key goals to improve child protection nationally, including establishing a comprehensive data base of child protection data, ensuring all child protection related laws are enforced, and making sure child protection systems are functioning ( DOJ, 2012 ). Other policy ambitions include improving services and creating cultures of child protection through major institutions such as families, schools, and government ( DOJ, 2012 ).

Additional policy documents authored by the Council for the Welfare of Children provide insights into national government policy agendas relating to child protection, although they provide limited detail or analysis of current or previous policy programs, and the ways in which these policy objectives might be achieved ( CWC, 2000 , 2005 , 2010 , 2011 ). They detail explicit rights-based strategies to child welfare and child protection policy, which are closely aligned to international rights and development agendas ( Roche, 2019 ). For example, the “Second National Plan of Action for Children 2011-2016” expresses the commitment of the Philippines to the UNCRC and “progressive realization of the rights of Filipino children” as an objective ( CWC, 2011 , p. 3). Similarly, “Child 21,” a frequently cited policy document authored by the CWC to assist with implementation of the UNCRC, aims to “synchronize family, community, and national efforts towards the full realization of the rights of children by year 2025” ( CWC, 2000 , p. 4).

The CPCP articulates the need for system strengthening via national responses and engagement by government and non-government organizations, communities, and faith-based organizations ( DOJ, 2012 ). It also highlights the role of national government actors in enforcing child protection related laws, ensuring child protection structures and services are functioning, and child protection cultures are improved ( DOJ, 2012 ). Despite articulating these policy objectives, these national policy documents lack information relating to the implementation and direct funding of child protection programs and measures, and their monitoring and evaluation, and as a government body lack the capacity to promote and enforce the policies they suggest in a meaningful way ( Roche, 2019 ).

“Middle-out” Approaches: Localized Governance and Child Protection Mechanisms

Situated between national and community level approaches to child protection, “middle-out” methods and structures in a child protection system comprise actors such as local government and non-government organizations who work to embed child protection agendas in regional functions of government and power ( Wessells, 2015 ). These approaches to child protection are widespread in the Philippines, largely due to the high levels of local government power and a range of non-governmental efforts to protect children.

Decentralization of Government Responsibility of Child Protection

Local governments have major regulatory powers and the responsibility for the welfare of their citizens, putting an onus on regions, provinces, municipalities, and barangays to develop their own primary programs and processes to meet child protection goals ( UNICEF, 2016 ). Recent national policy documents continue to make strong recommendations to utilize local government as the central point for all interventions for children, while guided by higher levels of government ( CWC, 2010 , p. 35). This has merit due to the numerous social issues experienced in communities, the limited reach of the national government into communities, and the difficult geographical nature of the Philippines, which makes service delivery difficult—all problems requiring local and contextualized responses ( UNICEF, 2016 ). This means that all levels of government and civil society are requested to assist in resolving social issues and addressing child protection issues, and designing children’s programs and projects, and child-friendly policies.

Government Child Protection Bodies and Functions

There are a range of localized committees and councils charged with the protection of children which represent the major responsible governing bodies for child protection. The CWC coordinates Regional Sub-Committees for the Welfare of Children, whose role is to translate the CWC’s policy directives in regions and assist Local Councils for the Protection of Children (LCPC) in their efforts on child protection ( DOJ, 2012 ; UNICEF, 2016 ). Legislation (Article 87 of PD 603) mandates that all local councils have an operating LCPC ( CWC, 2010 ). The role of LCPCs is to support the implementation of national policies intended to protect children, as well as develop and integrate policies, programs, and projects for children and make their jurisdictions “child-friendly” ( CWC, 2010 ). While these councils are a crucial component of government efforts in the implementation of these national policy directions, Madrid and colleagues (2013) found that in 2013 there was no official data on how many of these LCPCs were functional, while UNICEF (2016) identified that LCPCs are functional in 36% of provinces, 56% of cities, 44% of municipalities, and 34% of barangays . This is due to under-resourcing, unclear or overlapping responsibilities, and the limited capacity and expertise of staff ( UNICEF, 2016 ). LCPCs also support and fund Barangay Councils for the Protection of Children (BCPC), which act as community-level responders to child protection issues and are provided with funding and technical assistance ( DOJ, 2012 ; UNICEF, 2016 ).

Nationally, the Department of Social Welfare and Development delivers programs and services for children ( Sarmiento et al., 2017 ). Although the coverage of these programs is not published, DSWD offices can be found in communities across the country. Some of the DSWD programs relating to child abuse cases include case management, family violence prevention, child and family counseling services, and child protective behavior programs ( Yangco, 2010 ). Child protection actors based at the DSWD and in other health and local government roles are undergoing training in a “protocol for case management of child victims of abuse, neglect and exploitation” ( UNICEF, 2016 ). This protocol instructs child protection actors to report incidents and disclosures to the relevant authority, and support subsequent processes involving social workers and police ( UNICEF, 2016 ). The DSWD also has a 24-hour crisis intervention program called “Assistance to Individuals and Families in Crisis Situations (AICS)” in which social workers can assess and recommend cash assistance to families in response to a crisis up to 25,000 pesos (US$500) ( DSWD, 2018 ). Filling the gaps of the work of the DSWD are numerous non-government organizations.

Non-government Organizations and Child Protection

The involvement of civil society and non-government actors in child protection activities is encouraged by all levels of government ( DOJ, 2012 ). Hundreds of NGOs are accredited by the DSWD and provide a range of welfare programs relating to children’s welfare and their families. Organizations are operated by both domestic and international non-government organizations, and are often faith-based representing a variety of Christian denominations. The most recent information provided by the DSWD (2016) reveals 915 private social welfare agencies licensed by the DSWD. Many of the programs offered by NGOs focus on child and family welfare, as well as more specific services relating to mental health, drug rehabilitation, youth offending, disability, and out-of-home care for children. Services include the provision of basic needs like shelter, food, clothes, education programs, referrals, and case management services, as well as counseling ( Madrid et al., 2013 ).

Organizations also offer preventative programs that assist in reducing the likelihood of child maltreatment or preventing it entirely. Examples of these include programs on responsible parenting, maternal and neonatal health, women’s health, breastfeeding and immunization programs, and feeding programs ( Madrid et al., 2013 ). Madrid and colleagues (2013) identified child protection related activities across three barangays , finding 20 different programs across early childhood education, parent effectiveness, and child development seminars.

The most active provider of child protection services and interventions is the Child Protection Network, a non-government organization that has established 113 Women and Children Protection Units (WCPUs) across 57 provinces of the Philippines, many of which are based in Department of Health-run hospitals ( Child Protection Network, 2021 ). Funded by government, donors, and trustees, these units provide a raft of multidisciplinary services including medical, forensic, social, and legal, as well as specific violence against women services ( Child Protection Network, 2018 ). The social services include case management and risk and safety assessments, as well as therapeutic interventions and classes for children and their families ( Child Protection Network, 2018 ). In 2016, WCPUs handled nearly 8,000 cases ( Child Protection Network, 2016 ). The organization also provides professional development for workers exposed to child protection issues, such as trained medical specialists on child protection, the National Bureau of Investigation and the Philippine National Police ( Child Protection Network, 2018 ). Most referrals to WCPUs come from law enforcement, followed by walk-ins, then hospitals and social workers, while there are low referrals from schools and teachers ( Child Protection Network, 2016 ).

While WCPUs are the pre-eminent service for children who have experienced maltreatment, and provide important services and child protection infrastructure, they are not able to cover the vast number of children who experience abuse and neglect, with 24 of 81 provinces in the Philippines having no WCPU ( Child Protection Network, 2021 ; End Violence Against Children, 2021 ). Researchers have also identified that WCPUs often operate in isolation in addressing cases of abuse, provide a disjointed service, and their programs can be poorly implemented at local levels ( Terol, 2009 ; Ramiro et al., 2010 ). Recent research on child protection in a regional area of the Philippines found WCPUs with limited staffing capacity, inadequate resources, and poor community reach and uptake which hamper their capacity to provide adequate child protection interventions ( Roche, 2020b ).

Out-of-home Care

A primary government and non-government programmatic response for victims of child abandonment, neglect, and abuse is through out-of-home care, organized by both government and non-government welfare organizations ( Save the Children, 2011 ). While up-to-date statistics are not provided, in 2010, DSWD placed a total of 1,339 children in alternative forms of care including adoption, foster care and legal guardianship ( DOJ, 2012 ), while the use of residential care (institutional care provided in a non-family group setting) is widespread ( Save the Children, 2011 ; DSWD, 2015 , 2016 ). In 2016 there were 177 NGOs accredited by the DSWD operating a total of 197 residential care facilities for children and young people ( DSWD, 2016 ). The DSWD directly operates 46 residential care facilities for children who are victims of maltreatment, or are experiencing homelessness or mental illness ( DSWD, 2016 ). These residential care facilities vary in capacity, from four to 490 children ( DSWD, 2016 ). A recent DSWD annual report details 5,819 children in the residential care facilities run directly by DSWD; however, it provides limited detail of the numbers nor arrangements of children in the 197 DSWD-licensed residential care facilities ( DSWD, 2015 ). This indicates a high, but unknown number of children in residential care settings operated by non-government organizations.

The reason for young people to be placed in residential care is not necessarily related to abuse and neglect, but also for reasons relating to economic circumstances, and the opportunity that residential care can provide children and families in the form of economic support or secure schooling ( Roche, 2020a ). There is a distinct lack of research into the experiences of children living in out-of-home care in the Philippines, the conditions and practices of these settings, the extent of children’s safety, and children’s transition into independent adulthood ( Roche, 2017 ).

Bottom-up Approaches: Community-based Child Protection

“Bottom-up” approaches involve community actions at the grass roots level that utilize community actors and their strengths, and can also employ community-government collaboration ( Wessels, 2015 ). In contexts such as the Philippines, community-based child protection mechanisms also play an important role in responding to and preventing child maltreatment ( Wessells, 2015 ). A significant, yet under-utilized, “bottom-up” approach to child protection in the Philippines involves Barangay Council’s for the Protection of Children (BCPC). The role of BCPCs is to address issues of child maltreatment at a grass-roots level, and where functioning, offer initial responses to issues of child protection ( End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes International [ECPAT], 2006 ; Save the Children, 2011 ; Madrid et al., 2013 ).

BCPCs offer an initial response to issues of child protection in local communities, assisting abandoned, maltreated, and abused children, and organizing their safety ( ECPAT, 2006 ; Save the Children, 2011 ). To achieve this, barangays attempt to resolve child protection concerns, particularly through utilizing their strong and direct relationships with their communities ( UNICEF, 2016 ). The assistance of BCPCs is sometimes preferred by families over DSWD workers or NGOs due to limited trust in official responses to child maltreatment, and concern about sensitivity, timeliness, and the judicial process, and the capacity to resolve child abuse and neglect within barangays ( UNICEF, 2016 ). In some circumstances, children sit on BCPCs, and provide support and advice in cases of maltreated children ( Bessell, 2009 ).

However, BCPCs remain largely unfunded, informal, and untrained initiatives, and can often be ineffective in preventing or responding to child maltreatment. This is due to poor training and organization, limited funding, and inadequate technical support and monitoring ( DOJ, 2012 ). There are poor practices in barangays as well. UNICEF (2016) provides the example of a girl who was raped, and then required to marry the offender, for the family to save face, demonstrating the need for monitoring, training, clear guidelines, and reporting mechanisms for BCPCs.

Family as the Primary Protector of Children

Family is positioned as the primary protector of children, holding significant responsibilities and duties for children’s welfare both in Filipino sociocultural relations, as well as in national policy documents relating to children’s welfare. The Special Committee for the Protection of Children (SCPC) highlights the importance of family ties and strong family relationships in the prevention of children’s abuse and neglect, and emphasizes the responsibility families have in ensuring children’s welfare ( DOJ, 2006 ). Further, the SCPC ( DOJ, 2006 , p. 49) identifies that the challenge for child protection approaches is “to build and strengthen family stability, particularly among the poor and disadvantaged families.” These documents draw attention to overarching views of the responsibility and centrality of families to protect children from maltreatment, which equates with the view of the family unit bearing responsibility for its own welfare ( Yu, 2013 ).

National government policy documents describe an “ecological” view of children, situating children at the center of a society of multiple actors and systems that influence their well-being, rights, and protection ( CWC, 2000 , p. 43, 2010, p. 33). This view holds family as the most central actor relevant to children’s welfare, followed by the barangay , and then the institutional and programmatic influences on a child’s life, such as social services, schools, or religious communities ( CWC, 2010 ).

Community-level Reporting Processes

The reporting of child abuse and neglect, as defined in legislation, is mandatory for the head of a hospital or medical clinic, or a doctor or nurse, and they can break the law if they do not do so ( DOJ, 2013 ). Others, such as government workers, such as teachers, government lawyers, police, or barangay officials, have a “duty” to report abuse and neglect ( DOJ, 2013 ). Reports of child abuse, neglect, or exploitation are typically received by a DSWD official or the Philippine National Police, but can also be received by a range of agencies including the National Bureau of Investigation, or a member of a Barangay Council for the Protection of Children ( Madrid, 2009 ; DOJ, 2013 ). A telephone hotline to report child maltreatment, titled “Bantay Bata 163,” is available in many places across the country, and is operated by the charity arm of a major media company in the Philippines ( ABS-CBN, 2018 ). After the receipt of a report, investigations are conducted by the DWSD, who also have protective custody authority if deemed necessary ( Madrid, 2009 ; DOJ, 2013 ).

Challenges for Child Protection in the Philippines

Coverage and funding of programs.

Despite the range of child protection-related activities across the three levels, research has identified major failings in their coverage. Madrid and colleagues (2013) reveal that government provided child protection services, interventions and laws are barely funded or provided, identifying 31 laws and 17 pending bills in Congress relating to child protection that have not received funding ( Madrid et al., 2013 ). In a survey of community stakeholders relating to children’s welfare, the CWC and UNICEF (2016) found that many local government units have either no Barangay Council for the Protection of Children, or if present, are non-functional. The operation of LCPCs is impacted on by local government unit executives and the availability of funds ( CWC & UNICEF, 2016 ). Other analysis of the child protection activities of three local government units found that coverage of social and health services was low and that there were limited responses to child maltreatment, and minimal child protection programs or activities, particularly in regional areas ( Madrid et al., 2013 ; CWC & UNICEF, 2016 ). In one study, of those who were aware of available services, only 37% of males, and 25% of females utilized a child protection unit or woman and child protection unit in their province or region (CWC & UNICEF, 2016 ).

Levels of national government funding to child protection efforts are unclear. There is no specific budget allocated to child protection or the prevention of child maltreatment in the health, education, and social welfare areas of government, leaving the financing of distinct programs relating to children’s well-being and protection unidentifiable ( Madrid et al., 2013 ). In addition, lower levels of government do not differentiate child protection funding and programs from broader health and welfare budgets ( Madrid et al., 2013 ). The resourcing of local government units varies significantly, and those in poorer areas typically have less resources ( UNICEF, 2016 ). The Asian Development Bank highlights the weak taxing arrangements and low budget transparency as hindering development and government funding in the Philippines ( Asian Development Bank, 2014 ).

As noted previously, BCPCs differ in resources and capabilities across the country, despite mandated to receive funding from local government ( Department of the Interior and Local Government, 2012 ; UNICEF, 2016 ). They are reliant on local government unit funding and most BCPC workers are volunteers, despite BCPCs being a LGU requirement ( UNICEF, 2016 ). In one of the barangays investigated by Madrid and colleagues (2013), it was found that only 1% of the entire barangay budget was allocated to a local BCPC, amounting to approximately US$250 per annum. Acknowledging budgetary constraints and inadequate resources for child protection, particularly at the local government level ( DOJ, 2012 ), the Special Committee for the Protection of Children ( DOJ, 2006 ) has suggested financing child protection programs through the private sector, foreign governments, international NGOs, the World Council of Churches, and international philanthropists, among others ( DOJ, 2006 ), and has encouraged the national government to increase funding to child protection and child rights programs ( DOJ, 2006 ).

System Incoherence and Breakdown

Given the low level of funding and limited coverage of child protection efforts, it is unsurprising that the child protection system, as it currently stands, lacks coherence and frequently breaks down. Sarmiento and colleagues (2017) argue that the Philippines lacks the social welfare infrastructure, budgets, expertise, and capacity to provide the required interventions to prevent and respond to child abuse and neglect the way it intends. UNICEF (2016) relates this to a lack of collaboration between and within welfare sectors and a strong disjuncture between national positions on child protection, and the reality of child protection activities and programs at regional, local, and barangay levels. Other research finds that child protection programs are not holistic and comprehensive when applied at local levels ( Yangco, 2010 ).

The Committee for the Special Protection of Children identifies an array of failures across the child protection system relating to weak and inconsistent enforcement of laws relating to child protection, non-functional child protection mechanisms at multiple levels, a lack of technical competency, and an unresponsive judicial system ( DOJ, 2012 ). These issues are compounded by a limited capacity to encourage and enforce national policy programs at local government levels ( UNICEF, 2016 ).

At the community level, there are concerns that Barangay Councils for the Protection of Children work outside of the formal child protection system. BCPC councilors have expressed reservations about reporting child maltreatment issues to DSWD, as they determine that it is not always in the best interest of children and their families ( UNICEF, 2016 ). There are also poor understandings of preventing child maltreatment ( Madrid et al., 2013 ), and community misconceptions around the functions and purpose of BCPCs ( UNICEF, 2016 ). The CWC and UNICEF (2016) have also found that children who are victims of various forms of violence rarely disclose, and that families have a low awareness and utilization of child protection services.

Moving Forward: Child Protection System Strengthening

While top-down child protection approaches, including legislation, discourse on children’s rights, and national policy are well developed, there remains a significant gap between these visions and the reality of the Philippine child protection system. Despite institutional frameworks, the system struggles to address and respond to the needs of children and families, mostly due to a disconnect between the optimistic intentions of top-down approaches, and the under-resourced and poorly administered reality of both government and non-government supported child protection policy and programs. In addition, community-based child protection mechanisms are ad hoc, and lack the resources and technical skills required. The child protection system highlights the administrative constraints and institutional challenges in implementing welfare policies in the Philippines ( Kim & Yoo, 2015 ).

The systemic characteristics of child protection in the Philippines can be questioned. While understandings of child protection systems are broad, incorporating both formal and informal actors, the extent to which each works with the other is uncertain, as is the level of resources and coverage of the system as a whole. An extensive national child protection system is incongruent with traditions of social policy and welfare in the Philippines that typically resists intervening in the welfare of families in any significant way.

For this reason, bottom-up child protection responses that are enmeshed in community, and fit the physical, social, and economic contexts in which children live, are an important policy consideration ( Myers & Bourdillon, 2012b ). While basic legal foundations and rights for children’s protection are highly important, they are not necessarily the primary structure through which children are protected in developing contexts. Myers and Bourdillon (2012b) argue strongly for a shift from legal and normative standards to community and social relationships to be at the core of approaches to child protection. Through engaging families and communities—the main protectors of children in the Philippines—to build the protective capacity and strengths of the community, child protection responses can be improved ( Lachman et al., 2002 ; Myers & Bourdillon, 2012b ).

The challenge is also to connect national policy agendas on child protection and broader social protection to the activities of local governments and community level actors, while at the same time improve accountability and alignment across child protection programs and activities. Setting minimum standards of practice, collecting data, and raising the profile of child protection issues have been identified as ways to improve the system ( UNICEF, 2016 ). In developing contexts such as the Philippines, reducing child maltreatment relies on more than a child protection system, involving significant reductions to the contexts and environments that foster maltreatment. Social services, such as those related to child protection, are frequently only a small element in determining social outcomes ( Piachaud, 2015 ). Child protection approaches need to acknowledge and incorporate understandings of the influence of broader socioeconomic and political structures that influence life chances and outcomes ( Pells, 2012 ). Reducing multidimensional poverty and vulnerability is a crucial part of reducing incidence of child maltreatment ( Gabel, 2012 ). For the Philippines, views and values relating to acceptable social disadvantage must evolve, and the level of state intervention into the welfare of families lives be reassessed, to better protect children.

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Reflective Practice in Child Protection: A Practice Perspective

By: Kelly Dundon

When I thought about my experience and methods of using reflective practice, I wondered how I would ever be able to articulate and make sense of the complex, critical, and sometimes deep and painful thoughts that underpin my practice in front line child protection. Eventually I came to the realization that we all do a certain amount of reflective and critical practice on many differing levels. We can easily find time to reflect before, during, and after events, from the superficial to extensive and through our personal to professional lives.    Reflection allows us to plan, articulate, evaluate, exact change, and perhaps more importantly, learn in the complex issues that we face daily. As part of our working with often disordered and dysfunctional children and families, with reflection, we are able to positively work toward best outcomes and in the best interests of the children with whom we work.

    The importance of thinking reflectively, that is to break down and closely analyze the processes that occur in decision making, in child protection, I believe is an essential part of our role. Doing so helps us to develop a sense of what has been achieved, what is likely to be achieved, and what could be done better, the importance of which has long been evaluated by many writers, including Schon (1983), Johns (1996, 2000), and more recently Rolfe (2001) and Fook (2002). As students, child protection practitioners, and later in our careers as practice teachers, leaders, and in helping to shape policy, we are able with the methods of reflective practice to conclude, inform, and broaden our practice knowledge.

    I began to understand the importance of utilizing the tools that were available to me long before I knew what it was actually called. In 1998, I grappled with being a broke student and 21-year-old single mother of two. I juggled diaper changing and textbooks and felt overwhelmed with the demands that were either placed upon me, or that I had placed upon myself. I needed a way to make sense of it all, so I began to write a few lines every night about my placement, theories and methods, thoughts, fears, and achievements. This helped me to really focus on what the issues were. Not being a natural academic, I found this very useful. About a month later in a seminar, I learned that I had been documenting my learning experience and that this was an essential tool for every student. I have now kept eight years of practice diaries—all strictly confidential, of course, but boy, you should read the contents! Some are highly emotional and not very productive excerpts. Others are productive and insightful. It is pleasing to see one’s sense of self develop over time.

    I look at how I, and others around me, have grown in competence and thoughtfulness through this process. I can clearly see that at the end of each time we really think about what we are doing, there is what I call an “awakening”—the sudden realization that we are on the right or wrong track, that we can do this very difficult job. I see the clarity, harmony, and satisfaction. When I feel this way, it is almost as if I have lifted above the situation. I am able to see below and think laterally about the potential impacts of my actions, before, during, and after an event. I add that a major part of working in child protection is the responsibility placed upon us as practitioners and team leaders to make good decisions. We can, with reflection, be able to accurately describe in progress notes and through assessments what has led us to our decisions and critically analyze our practice without feeling the burden of blame.

A Model for Reflection

    Borton’s Developmental Model for Reflective Practice, developed as early as 1970, is of great interest to me. The framework works in a sequential and cyclical order and is very easy to follow and recommended for first-time reflective practice. Borton’s (1970) model looks at three levels of reflection—What? So what? and Now what?

    He starts with a descriptive level of reflection, which he calls the “what.” An example is: What is the issue/problem? What was my role? What was mine and others’ response to the actions taken? Then we move to “So what?” This concentrates on the theory and knowledge building level of reflection: So, what does this tell or teach me about my service user, about myself, about the model of care that I am providing? So, what did I base my actions on and what was going through my mind as I acted upon them? So, what could I have done differently? So, what is my new understanding of this situation? “Now what” looks at what we can now do to break the cycle and to improve the situation in the future. The broader issues now need to be examined if this action is now to be successful. Once we have done all this, we can look at the end of this cycle by asking ourselves: Now what might be the consequences of this action?

    When opening one’s mind to using a model such as Borton’s, and particularly with practitioners who are new to reflection, I find that a very simple exercise is to concentrate on something like what happened at breakfast this morning and to really start to pick apart the events—why certain things occurred and others didn’t, and so forth.

Other Models

    I also see great value in drawing or mapping situations that are complex and in need of a good sorting out. In one of my previous positions, we used a visual mapping technique in looking at one particular child whose needs were complex. The map was huge. It covered a wall. Everyone really got into drawing and describing different ideas over the course of about a week. This type of free association whet many an appetite and allowed us to think creatively and outside of the boxes that we can often get stuck in when working in child protection.

    Having spoken to many workers involved in child protection, I have found that we all have different ways and levels in which we reflect. Some use a log, mapping techniques, and supervision or verbal accounts and discussions within teams to thrash out the problems to get differing opinions and ideas. You may ask a colleague to play devil’s advocate and question your beliefs, values, and attitudes about, say, drug affected parenting. We can, with this level of discussion, learn a great deal from each other and ourselves. We can closely examine and reflect upon our fears, discriminations, power relations, values, and beliefs. We can also examine the ripple effects of these issues for our service users and the wider community setting.

Why Reflect?

    I can think of many different reasons to keep reflecting upon what we do. First, we are in the business of protecting children. We need to be clear that we do protect children and ourselves when we are in the field. A little bit of thought and planning now may be of huge benefit later. Something that I have found is that reflection seems to create a certain clarity and sense of safety around this business we are in. The log I use is a very safe way of offloading and debriefing myself, as well as discussions with colleagues and managers. It enables me to avoid stress and vicarious trauma. It helps me to move forward from anger and frustration at service users, colleagues, departments, policy, and red tape toward a certain inner peace! It helps me to understand why I feel this way, why it needs to be this way, and how what I do could potentially change this situation positively, I guess from negative energy to positive energy or something like that. By doing this we can go a long way toward keeping well at work, which affects our service delivery and ultimately the way in which we do our business with children.

    The constant weight of workload pressure and prioritization is often of concern to us as child protection workers. It is easy to get caught in the overwhelming feeling of drowning in paperwork, children with high needs, and balancing risk like a trapeze artist. When we feel this way, to sit quietly in a park for five minutes and briefly run through the priorities, we can look at how we can work smarter, perhaps delegate tasks to families, therefore empowering them and including them in planning for children. In the wider spectrum, we can look at how we can establish a work-life balance, while still getting through all tasks and complying. A balance is possible with some thought, care, and of course, departmental policy, which positively supports work-life balance and understands its importance in terms of overall success and health of its work force and work practices.

    Second, instead of finding ourselves bogged down with constraints, if we are serious about our roles as corporate parents, we can truly focus on the children we serve and what would be in the best interests for that child, even if what we think would be the best solution is not possible. We have thought through the “what ifs.” We can evidence this through formal and ad-hoc supervision and case notes. When an adult seeks information on his childhood file, if he can clearly see the efforts that were made to keep him within his family or the reflective practice and decision-making that led to his removal, this may be part of his healing process, and we have helped to identify to him what the department is, why we do what we do, our mistakes, and how we have learned and developed over time, a transparency about child protection.

    We can encourage others to utilize reflection by offering consultation papers, questionnaires, and service user groups to empower our staff groups, children, and families. The benefits of reflection in terms of collaborative practice with other agencies and wider communities opens many doors to our understanding of roles and responsibilities, and it can be critical in removing boundaries and stopping us from blaming others. We must seek to empower others around us to take personal responsibility for reflection, for speaking up and letting people know what we think and why through this process.

    Another part of reflection is being able to use the criticism we face and utilize it—that is, turn the situation on its head, and learn something positive from it. Instead of being defensive and subjective, we can learn and move forward. I acknowledge, through my own experience, that this healing process may take time, especially if we are particularly wounded by a scathing remark or insult in our work practices, but it is possible.

    We are also able to establish boundaries when working with children, something that is often assumed that we can automatically do, although it does take experience, time, and skill. When a worker does over-identify with a client, this can be a negative experience for the provider and user. If we find the ability, through reflection, to step back and look at the bigger picture, we are able to work more effectively with a service user.

    In conclusion, the importance of critical and reflective practice is difficult to measure and often under-estimated, yet it is crucial to our professional and personal development. More important, I feel that reflection helps and prepares us to be accountable and responsible for the very difficult decisions and challenges we often face in child protection and allows us to make good choices and have better outcomes for children.

Kelly Dundon, her husband Martin, and their four children immigrated to Australia in 2005 from England. Kelly has six years of front-line child protection experience and is now a team leader in a statutory organization. Kelly spends her spare time with her family and writing about the ups and downs of child protection.

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RATIONALE for CHILD PROTECTION POLICY RATIONALE for CHILD PROTECTION POLICY

its our schoolo guidelines in implementing school child policy

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Child Protection in the UK Essay

Child protection basically refers to the welfare and safety of a child by protecting them from bodily, emotional, neglect and sexual abuse. According to UNICEF, 2006, child protection refers to prevention and response to violence, abuse, as well as exploitation against children. These include child trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation, child labour, in addition to other destructive traditional practices like female genital mutilation (FGM) and marriage of children.

Children are subjected to violation of their rights all over the world, but despite of the extent, very few incidences are reported and under-recognized impediments to child development and survival besides being violations to basic human rights.

The convention on the rights of the child (1989), candidly elaborates children’s fundamental rights as encompassing “the right to be protected from economic exploitation and harmful work, from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse, and from physical or mental violence. The law also ensuring that children will not be separated from their family against their will” (UNICEF, 2006, P.1).

The development of the child protection system in the United Kingdom has been distorted by two factors namely; the impact of media reporting and the way in which celebrated child abuse tragedies have been handled. This essay is geared towards discussing both sides of the coin concerning the two factors mentioned earlier and possible solutions to save the situation.

There are various agencies charged with the responsibility of child protection, for instance in Wales and England, the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF) gives statutory guidance to local authorities. In Northern Ireland, it is the department of health, social services, and public safety (DHSSPS) while in Scotland it is the Scottish government, which guides the local authorities.

These agencies have put in measures to ensure cooperation between the agencies through the safeguarding boards. For instance, in England and Wales, the local safeguarding children’s boards (LCSBs) guarantee that the main agencies charged with protecting children work efficiently and jointly in supporting and safeguarding children’s welfare locally (NSPCC, 2010, p.2). LSBCs are more effective as they replaced the non-statutory and core membership is outlined in the Children Act, 2004.

This body incorporates police, local authorities, and health bodies among others. In Northern Ireland, a multiagency ACPCs, (Area Child Protection Committees) is the central point for ensuring local cooperation to protect children who are specifically considered as facing a major harm. Currently reforms are underway to instill change in protection services that include establishing a statutory regional Safeguarding Board (SBNI).

In Scotland there are 30 local child protection committees (CPCs) charged with child protection systems in their relevant fields (NSPCC, 2010, p.4). They comprise representatives from diverse backgrounds like the police, local authorities, children services, voluntary sector, and health bodies. However, in Scotland no Safeguarding Boards have been introduced yet.

Looking at child protection in the UK at the local level, children’s services by local authority are in charge of planning and protection services for the children. In England, all children services’ authorities must have a children and a young people’s plan as per the Children Act 2004 in order to offer premeditated bearing to the entire services to children. They should also establish a trust for children that will oversee planning, commissioning, and adequate delivery of children’s services.

On 1 April 2010, a children’s trust board was established following a statutory direction. The director in charge of children’s services is proficiently answerable for services delivered by the children’s trust for example, social services, and education. In addition, an elected councilor is chosen as “lead member” for the services. The lea member, the director and LSCB are in charge of creating and putting into operation the child protection systems as well as policies for professionals who work with children (NSPCC, 2010, p.6).

Various laws that govern the child protection in the UK and this legislation paves way for prosecution of people accused of child harm or abuse. This legislation has been in existence since the 1880s; however, following a sequence of sophisticated deaths because of child abuse culminated into ensuing inquiries that have birthed the recent systems of child protection. A case in study is the first formal inquiry into a death of a child by the Curtis Committee in England, named Dennis O’Neill in 1945(Laming, 2003).

His foster father killed Dennis at the age of 12. However, Maria Colwell who died at the age of seven in 1973 is the wheel behind the founding of current child protection organization. There were further changes instigated by deaths of other children especially Jasmine Beckford who died at the age of four, in 1984(Laming, 2003).

Today, the legislative structure for child protection system in England and Wales is established in The Children Act 1989. In Northern Ireland the framework is instituted in the Children Order 1995, while in Scotland it is the Children Act (Scotland) 1995 (NSPCC, 2010, p.6). There have been several amendments to the Children Act 1989 following a legislation, which was fueled by the Lord Laming’s inquiry.

This was an inquiry into the death of an eight year old by the name of Victoria climbie back in 2000, which piloted the publishing of Every Child Matters (DfES, 2003) by the government (NSPCC, 2010, p.9). Later, the Children Act 2004 was established to provide a legal outline for the program. Although, it did not replace the Children Act 1989, it brought about radical changes to the system through which children’ services were planned in Wales and England: it became fully operational amid 2006 and 2008 (Munro, 2011).

The media in every society plays a great role in shaping the social aspect of that society. The media is a socialization agent whose importance cannot be overlooked. It changes the behavior of the people as well as their attitudes towards certain issues in the society.

Through the media, the aspects of the society that are inappropriate are easily demonstrated and therefore mechanisms of dealing with them come to place. When an issue becomes a highlight in the media it becomes a central focus for the whole society. This is the same impact that the media has on the child protection system in the U.K. The media reporting on child protection system have had both positive and negative effects. This has been evidenced in a number of child abuse cases reported before (Munro, 2011).

On a positive note, the media has been instrumental in enhancing awareness of the child protection issues, legal structures present in case of harm. They also expose cases where children have been exploited or abused. In addition, they advertise the toll free numbers in case of abuse as well as keeping all stakeholders like social workers and the government on their toes regarding children protection system.

It has informed on the need to report cases of child abuse and thus making it easier for the local authorities and the government to provide children protection services. To some extend it has steered public confidence in the UK protection system especially coverage on a successful delivery to an abused, exploited or neglected child. Through research and its extensive search for information, the media helps expose facts that are not available to the social workers or the local authorities (Galilee, 2007).

This can also be seen in the light of increased number of articles and journals tackling child abuse allowing increased coverage on the issues that concern child abuse. This information is valuable for the success of the child protection policy. The media also passes on very educational and helpful messages using adult fiction, children’s fiction as well as different features or editorials from the print and broadcast media (Ayre, 2001, p.880).

The media differentiates between normal and deviant behavior making it easy to understand child abuse. When some behaviors are exhibited, children may not be able to understand that it is wrong in the first place and that their rights are being violated. Through the media they can therefore differentiate what is abuse and what is not. On the same note, the media acts as a watchdog for the people to ensure that the provisions, for instance, of the Children Act are well adhered to.

It also reflects on the government and society’s failure in handling child abuse. The media will audaciously expose government’s failure in uncovering the death of an abused child. In addition, another child’s death resulting from abuse leads to revisiting of previous tragedies. This is good for holding everyone responsible (Goddard &Saunders, 2001).

However, various researchers have shown that media coverage on child protection in most instances does more harm than good. One of the key concerns is the portrayal of social workers and social work. Views from different individuals and researchers over the last thirty years have indicated that the media misrepresents social work and especially the press reporting by giving undue negative and biased reporting of social workers and social work.

Furthermore, a high percentage of reporting by the media on social work is on child welfare and abuse (Vallianatos, 2001). This has to some extend created hostility and mistrust towards the social workers as he service users feel that they are dealing with incompetent service providers. This further leads to a representative conclusion that the profession is unskilled in speaking to the outside world, moreover is equally apprehensive of journalists (Galilee, 2007).

An interesting feature is evidenced in relating the relationship between social work and newsworthiness. Most of the social work stories especially on child abuse are slow and generally do not meet the requirements of the news value. However, social work stories occupy headlines when there is a case of immense failure. For example in the Beckford inquiry as mush as the news qualified as news values, the image of social workers was put at stake (Elsley, 2010).

They were described as “naïve, susceptible, negligent, incompetent, and untrained besides being powerful, heartless bureaucrats” (Galilee, 2007). In the Cleveland sex abuse case the perspective on social workers were similarly described as incompetent and powerful bureaucrats. Additionally, they were depicted as indecisive when put together to handle a problem. The daily mirror on July, 6, 1988 described social workers for children as having “laid back attitude, lack of accountability, and being too easily susceptible to ‘trendy’ theories” (Galilee, 2007).

The case was also depicted as a dispute between the state’s dedication to look after children and parents’ responsibility to implement a corresponding paternalism. This has led to creation of mistrust in the system and deprofessionalization of social work.

During the three decades, other issues regarding the role of the media and child protection have also surfaced. It also emerged that melodramatic reporting of a string of fêted child exploitation and abuse scandals specifically in England and Wales led to continual denigration in the media of the child welfare organizations considered blameworthy for those children’s’ deaths. The media has contributed to the conception of a climate of distrust, blame and fear which is seemingly rife in the area of child protection.

This is indicative of destructive alterations introduced into the child protection system following the self-protective reactions of pertinent authorities both locally and nationally to the mass media ambush (Ayre, 2001, p.881).

Despite the efforts to use more resources to enhance the intricacy, scope, and legislation of the child protection law, the public confidence has remained obstinately and frighteningly low. This is because of media coverage and handling of the previous tragedies. Those celebrated scandals called for a lot of public attention and increased response in both the broadcast and print media. Whereas this awareness created by the coverage had the potential to have a positive effect on child protection system; it did exactly the opposite.

This is because there emerged antagonistic public pillorying in the media over the child agencies involved (Ayre & Preston, 2010). There was also the publication of the in-depth recommendations following the involvement of the public inquiries into the cases made to the welfare agencies. A climate of blame has also prevailed to this effect. Either this is clearly evidenced in media reporting where it is the government or the child abuse professionals are to blame who turn the blame to the family. This has created more tension working against the protection system.

The urge for the journalists to sell news has driven them into constructing news with immediacy and tailoring drama in order to sell. This has led to a climate of fear, for example there is more coverage on sex abuse scandals. The media portrays sex abuse as coming from unknown assailants and not someone familiar to the child (Goddard &Saunders, 2001).

Moral panic therefore results from overdramatizing these activities to extreme events of sex rings, murder, and abduction of children into care by the social workers and thus over-sensitizing the underlying risks. This fear also extends to not only the public, but also the professional groups and policy makers (Ayre, 2001, p. 885).

Media coverage on child abuse or protection create a mistrust between the public, policy makers and politicians on one side and professionals dealing with child protection on the other. Substantial anxiety is brought forth in relationships through the adversarial nature of child protection system. Severally, child protection professionals have been described as “child stealers who steal sleeping children at night” in the media (Vallianatos, 2001).

They are seen as trusting individual with very liberal working ethics. This has worsened public confidence in the protection system. It is common knowledge that in the media “good news is no news” therefore there is no much regard is granted to the everyday successes of the agencies and the protecting system after a successful detection of abuse, and prevention of fatal injuries or even death.

The focus is to dwell on the failures in order to “produce” news. Although its not only the media will want to display a better image of child protection, those in the child welfare profession want a better image too.

Media reporting and the way previous cases on child abuse and resulting deaths has great an impact on the success of the child protection system in the United Kingdom. This has proven to be a tough fight for the government to win given the public perception, attitudes, and lack of confidence in the system.

The government has tried to deal with the previous cases with a considerable gravity (Boateng, 2003), for instance in Victoria Climbie’s case several changes were introduced in the legislation system better protection for the children.

This was also evidenced in the handling cases of Maria Colwel and Jasmine Beckford; which saw major changes on the Children Act 1989. Despite these measures the blame and lack of confidence still lurks. There is a need to understand that this is not entirely and exclusively the responsibility of the government and social workers (Parton, et.al 1997).

A more feasible solution to these perceptions is the need to emphasize that the family has the greatest role to play in child protection. The family comes in by primarily preventing the abuse and exploitation of children right under their noses, in their homes. Previous research and past cases indicate that close family members and neighbors perpetrate child abuse. As the primary socializing agent, the family has the responsibility of instilling the right morals on its members and teaching them what to do if abused even when the parents are not around.

They should also teach children to check out for early signs of any abuse. The family can also support the protection system by supporting the social workers when required to give any information regarding child welfare. They should also change the underlying perceptions as mapped by the media (Tunstill & Hughes 2006).

Social workers should change the way they handle the media concerning child abuse. There has been a “somewhat” a cold war between the two parties. As much as the media might misrepresent their work, they are not able to face the public (Colton, et.al, 2001). The media on the other hand should respect ethics governing their work and keep away from tailoring news to sell more and in the process creating fear, blame and mistrust among the public.

The media should also give information, which is not exaggerated and unnecessary emphasis on the failure of various stakeholders in this regard. It should stop overemphasizing on strangers or outsiders as the main perpetrators of violence, abuse against the children, and let them understand that people around them even among family members and friends can violate their rights (Ayre & Preston, 2010).

The government on the other hand should ensure that it enhances the image of the protection system. Its legislations should be geared towards enhancing the welfare of the children and not otherwise. For example, the NHS bill passed recently is set to jeopardise the child protection especially if misinterpreted.

Finally, the media, child abuse professionals, and the government should all avoid using child protection as means of enhancing their image at the expense of the children (Hetal, 2010). In addition, child protection should not be driven by the urge to get funding.

Reference List

Ayre, P. 2001, “Child protection and the media: lessons from the last three decades”, British journal of social work, vol. 31 no.1, pp. 887-901.

Ayre, P. & Preston-Shoot, M. 2010, Children’s Services at the Crossroads: A Critical Evaluation of Contemporary Policy for Practice , Russell House, Lyme Regis.

Boateng, P. 2003, Every Child Matters . Web.

Colton, M., Sanders, R. and Williams, M. 2001, An Introduction to Working with Children , Palgrave, Basingstoke.

Elsley, S. 2010, Media Coverage of Child Deaths in the UK: The impact of Baby P: A Case for Influence? Briefing No 8, Centre for UK-wide Learning in Child Protection , University of Edinburgh, London.

Galilee, J. 2007, 21 st century social work: Literature Review on Media Representations of Social Work and Social Workers . Web.

Goddard, C., Saunders, B 2001, Child abuse and the media : child abuse prevention . Web.

Hetal, P. 2010, A Guide to Social Workers, Palgrave, Basingstoke.

Laming, H. 2003, The Victoria Climbie Inquiry . Web.

Munro, E. 2011, The Munro Review of Child Protection: Final Report – A Child Centered System . Web.

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Parton, N., Thorpe, D. & Wattam, C. 1997, Child protection, Risk and the Moral Order , Macmillan, Basingstoke.

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• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2022, December 2). Child Protection in the UK. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-protection-in-the-uk/

"Child Protection in the UK." IvyPanda , 2 Dec. 2022, ivypanda.com/essays/child-protection-in-the-uk/.

IvyPanda . (2022) 'Child Protection in the UK'. 2 December.

IvyPanda . 2022. "Child Protection in the UK." December 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-protection-in-the-uk/.

1. IvyPanda . "Child Protection in the UK." December 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-protection-in-the-uk/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Child Protection in the UK." December 2, 2022. https://ivypanda.com/essays/child-protection-in-the-uk/.

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