Able Child Africa takes our responsibility to keep all individuals, including children and young people with disabilities, safe in the work we deliver seriously. We have a detailed inclusive safeguarding policy that applies to all organisational activities including fundraising, communications and advocacy in addition to programmatic delivery.
About this resource
The full policy is relevant for all Able Child Africa and partner organisation representatives including employees, trustees, consultants, volunteers, and supporters. It also applies to donor staff and representatives where donors are conducting visits to funded programmes, communicating about programmes, or coming into contact with programme stakeholders.
Able Child Africa believes that the best way to safeguard children with disabilities is to inform them of their rights. If a child with disabilities is educated on their right to be protected, they are better equipped to understand and report abuse.
Children with disabilities are more likely to be out of education or left out of activities that inform them of their rights. As a result, many children with disabilities are unaware they have the same rights as children without disabilities and are more likely to endure bullying, neglect and violence without recognising it as abuse.
To ensure children with disabilities understand their rights and know what to expect from organisational child safeguarding systems, multiple methods can be used to communicate this, including the development of child friendly and accessible information booklets.
To ensure important aspects of Able Child Africa’s own inclusive safeguarding policy are understood by the children and vulnerable young adults that we work with through our programmes, we have developed a child friendly version. The child friendly inclusive safeguarding policy has been designed specifically for children and young people with disabilities and is to be used to complement other activities that we deliver to raise awareness of our safeguarding cycle.
To express an interest in our disability-inclusive child safeguarding training packages, email: lauren@ablechildafrica.org
