Who is the toolkit for?
This toolkit is for community-level practitioners who work directly with children, families and communities on issues related to domestic violence against children; who are seeing increased violence during COVID-19; who are in a position to provide support services to children at risk while following COVID-19 safety protocols. This includes practitioners in CSOs, local government and social service agencies.
What is in the toolkit?
The toolkit consists of a series of practice examples from ten member organisations from Family for Every Child’s alliance and includes a range of intervention types. These examples have been proven to work and have high potential for replication across regions during the COVID-19 pandemic and after. Each describes how a practice was adapted during the pandemic to enable continuous delivery of services to children who are vulnerable to abuse and violence, and looks at the impact of the practice and why it was effective.
How to use the toolkit
The toolkit has been developed to support practitioners and can be used in planning and implementing programmes. Practitioners can refer to the individual case studies (practice examples) or use the whole toolkit in its entirety. It can be used to:
- Encourage practitioners to try out new techniques without restricting themselves to a single model, and give them a better sense of how to integrate methodologies from different approaches.
- Show practitioners how others have worked to redefine frameworks and incorporate new methods to increase the effectiveness of their work.
- Consider practice examples from Africa, Asia and Latin America.
- Positively influence practitioners to take the best possible course of action in the changed environment of COVID-19.
- Show how practitioners have addressed the prevention of violence in the context of maintaining physical distance, home isolation, and quarantining.
How was the toolkit created?
The toolkit was developed collaboratively with frequent consultation with Family for Every Child members and their input and feedback was incorporated throughout the process.
The collaboration began with an open-ended questionnaire encouraging self-reflection on practice, which was followed by Zoom meetings and the sharing of documents and records.
Each alliance member identified one innovative practice that directly helped to decrease or prevent domestic violence and abuse against children during the pandemic, sharing methodology and results.
Members discussed how and why particular practices had been effective, how stakeholders were involved, the adaptations that were made, and the ways in which families and community were motivated to participate.
Available language versions
The toolkit is currently available online in English and Spanish. Bangla and Sinhala versions are coming very soon.