Montserrat and other UK Overseas Territories will be getting some much needed assistance in enhancing strategies for detecting and reporting child sexual abuse cases, the help is coming from the OECS Commission.
This assistance comes through a sub-regional workshop in Antigua and Barbuda from today Monday 22 through to Thursday September 25.
The sub-regional workshop is responding to and managing child sexual abuse in the UK overseas territories is critical to shaping policy on protecting child rights.
Head of the OECS Social Policy Unit David Popo says the seminar hopes to achieve several benefits from the participating states including enhanced child abuse information systems.
In an OECS Commission release on Sunday, it says: “the seminar hopes to achieve several benefits for the participating states, including enhanced child abuse information systems. Among other benefits, it is expected that the participants will refine communication strategies with key and strategic messages and interventions to address barriers to non-reporting; produce a child abuse system map, and agree on the production of child protection information digests that will inform national planning, management and response.”
The sub-regional workshop on responding to and managing child sexual abuse in the UK Overseas Territories will secure agreement on a core set of child abuse indicators, additionally it will explore issues such as the flow and consistency of information from data collection to calculation and information use for policy and programming, it will also strengthen capacity to develop strategies to prevent and respond to child sexual abuse more efficiently.
The anticipated intense four day activity at the Grand Royal Antiguan Beach Resort will target mid-level professionals who specialize in the management of child abuse cases; as well as Government Officials from Social Development and Child Protection Ministries from Montserrat and the other UK Overseas Territories consistent with the revise treaty of Basseterre and the deepening of the integration process in the OECS sub region.
The release also added that the workshop is being conducted to facilitate greater harmonization of approaches toward reporting and reducing the rate of child sexual abuse across Montserrat and other OECS member states, this is in an effort to either start or enhance and sustain a national child abuse information collection process which will lead to the establishment of agreed indicators.
The results and recommendations of the workshop with the UK territories will be ultimately rolled out to OECS member states including Montserrat.
The workshop is organized by the OECS Commission through financial support of the UNICEF Eastern Caribbean Office and its Department for International Development DFID safeguarding project.
