On Save the Children’s International Members Meeting in 2011, Save the Children Romania was awarded the first prize within Save the Children International’s competition for Most Innovative Projects, after implementing a national programme aiming at building a society free of violence for our children.
09/06/2011
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The programme was built on earlier success Save the Children has had in lobbying for a law banning all forms of corporal punishment against children and aimed at overcoming the obstacles that have prevented the law being fully effective in practice - strong cultural convictions making it socially accepted for an adult to hit a child; lack of training for professionals in education and health systems; lack of services for victims and perpetrators; lack of parenting programmes aiming at helping parents educate their children in a positive manner.
In 2009, Save the Children Romania established the Centre for Emotional and Behavioural Education for Children (CEECC), with funding from Innovation Norway. The centre has played an important part in Save the Romania’s work on fighting violence against children on all levels of society, and especially in implementing the below mentioned activities, from individual treatment of children with emotional or behavioural disorders, to capacity and knowledge building among children, parents, teachers, officials and health professionals. The centre is today widely acknowledged by health professionals from all over Romania.
In the process of monitoring the enforcement of the law, Save the Children Romania undertook the challenging task of addressing all key players involved in the fight with all forms of violence against children, developing a top down – bottom up approach allowing:
1. Partnerships with governmental institutions (The Ministry of Education, Research, Youth and Sports, Ministry of Health) to ensure project activities are implemented at national level and invite Save the Children Romania to play an active role in development of key strategic documents for child well being: the National Strategy for Early Education, the National Strategy for Child Mental Health, the National Strategy for Parenting.
2. Capacity building with teachers, parents and health professionals, empowering them to design educational settings sensitive to the special needs of a child at risk or already victim of violence, to develop violence prevention programs in schools, to become more confident in using non-violent discipline measures (The Innovation Norway supported CEECC was, and still is, a core actor in implementing this activity);
3. Service development for children and adolescents at risk or victims of violence and abuse and their parents.
4. Emerging and documentation of best practices: a manual on positive education was developed showing how, in order to get sustainable change in attitudes and behaviours with regard to violence against children at societal level, action must be taken at each key factor’s level: child-parent-teacher. With the support of Innovation Norway, CEECC enforced the first national study on children’s mental health in Romania in 2010, and later published several manuals for helping children and adolescents with mental health problems.
5. Awareness raising campaign: all tools to raise awareness with regard to abuse and violence against children were put to work: peer education in schools; media and general population were targeted through spot broadcasting; communities were sensitised via public debates.
Results included: supporting more than 1000 professionals, reaching over 16,000 children, assisting more than 800 children victims and intervention in 200 families.
Save the Children Romania was not alone in developing such initiative: Save the Children Sweden and Save the Children Norway, long term models and partners for SC Romania, constantly offered our team technical support and model of good practice based on their extended experience in fighting all forms of violence against children.
Moreover, the program was innovative by having a prestigious private institution – The Romanian Commercial Bank as strategic partner in implementing such ambitious activities. The initiative could not have been implemented to such a successful degree without the establishment of CEECC with the financial support of Innovation Norway.
It is only natural that, in this moment of great success and recognition of our efforts, we think of our partners with gratitude.