The rights of children living in alternative care are frequently ignored, and often violated. This target group suffers from disadvantages not experienced by those living with birth families and there are numerous cases of rights abuses, some of which are systemic.
SOS Children’s Villages has been working to embed children’s rights within care settings for many years. Our approach has been multifaceted, embracing structures and institutions, care professionals and young people themselves. One gap identified in the course of this work has been the absence of effective training programmes for care professionals which have children’s rights at the core.
This manual has been produced to fill that gap. The two-day course outlined in these pages is designed to familiarise groups of care professionals with the international standards and principles surrounding children’s rights – and above all, to relate this to the daily experience and challenges arising in the field of alternative care. The course is intended to provide participants with the information, motivation and strategies that they can use to carry children’s rights into their daily work. The aim is to contribute to higher quality care and a culture of respect for children’s rights.
The manual is intended for use in institutions which carry out pre-service or in-service training of care professionals. We hope that it may become a standard component in the training offered to all care professionals with responsibilities for children living in alternative care.
