Chronicle Editor
Sukulwenkosi Dube-Matutu, [email protected]
CONTACT Family Counselling Centre has capacitated stakeholders from Gwanda on child protection issues in order to ensure improved identification, response and handling of child sexual abuse cases.
This is part of a child protection project which was rolled out in the district by the organisation in May this year which seeks to deal with child sexual abuse.
The organisation has decentralised it’s operations to the Gwanda Provincial Hospital One Stop Centre.
In interview during a training workshop Contact Family Counselling Centre child protection coordinator, Mr Thandazani Ndlovu said there is need for corroborated efforts from stakeholders in order to ensure protection of children. He said they offer a variety of services which include counselling, awareness raising, capacity building of stakeholders.
“Our core mandate is to do counselling and conduct counselling training where we offer professional and lay counselling courses and capacity building for various stakeholders. We have a special project that looks into children with bias towards child sexual abuse. The main thrust of the programme is on preventing and responding to survivors of child sexual abuse.
“We are targeting minors, particularly persons under the age of 18. Today we are facilitating a child protection workshop where we want to look at child protection issues in Gwanda. We are targeting community based stakeholders such as community development coordinators, child care workers, church and youth representatives among other stakeholders. We want to assess the situation and issues of child protection within communities and see what kind of interventions can be implemented,” he said.
Mr Ndlovu said the workshop seeks to capacitate and sensitise stakeholders to be able to respond to child sexual abuse. He said their programmes also target men and young boys.
@DubeMatutu
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derick.khumalo