Child Protection Policy & ICMEC Portal
(International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children)
Child Protection During COVID-19 Response
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CHILD PROTECTION POLICY
The Tri-Association is a proud participant and supporter of the International Task Force for Child Protection (ITFCP) new standards for child protection.
In partnership with the Office of Overseas Schools, the Association is committed to offering the member schools continued access to Child Protection Training with the expectation that all schools will develop their own policies and train key members of their staff to lead the community in matters related to the protection of children and youth.
These expectations are based on the following principles:
- Every child has the right to be protected from harm and abuse.
- Every member of the school community has the responsibility to support the protection of children and youth.
- Every school has the duty and responsibility to protect and care for the physical and social-emotional well -being of every student enrolled in the school and those who are affected by the operations of the school.
- All actions related to child protection are taken with the best interest of the child in mind. These interests must be the priority in the management and decision-making that accompanies situations related to Child Protection.
As such, we support an ethos of protection for all our schools and partners. Resources related to institutional child protection programs may be found at EdPortal.ICMEC.org.
Mandatory Reporting
Tri-Association employees, interns, volunteers, and independent contractors will ensure organizational leadership and local or international law enforcement is made aware of reports of child protection concerns relating to children encountered in the course of their work. Employees, interns, volunteers, and independent contractors will observe mandatory reporting obligations as required by law.
Working with Children in Professional Settings
Staff who have incidental contact with children in their work will abide by the Tri-Association or partner organization child protection policy, whichever is more restrictive. The taking of photographs is by consent only, and images should be cleared by an institution representative to ensure no children are pictured without their consent.
When working in a youth-serving organization, one-on-one contact with children should be avoided and reported to the host organization if it happens incidentally. All contact with children should be observable and interruptible. Under no circumstances should staff contact children under 18 years of age or share their personal contact details with children encountered during the course of their work. If this occurs incidentally it must be reported to the host organization designate.
Refrain from touch or contact not required in the course of providing professional services and that appears inappropriate to a reasonable person or lacks consent from the child.
Adult Communication With or About a Child
It is understood that staff will never seek contact with, personal information about, or correspond with a child as part of their work role unless this is approved as integral to a program and safeguards are in place. Protective communication should include monitored platforms (such as school and work email) and no one-on-one contact. Any communication with children should be risk assessed by Tri Association and host organization prior to commencement.
Personal details about a child (children) should never be shared on personal social media accounts (i.e., tagging, sharing full names). Personal or physical information that identifies the location of a child should never be shared on a website or in communications (i.e., posting the address of a camp or name of school). Communication about children should be respectful of their rights and kept to information that is necessary to provide a safe environment.
Targeted Child Protection Resources
- Gender and Sexuality terms (LGBTQIA+)
- Learning from Young People: preventing peer-on-peer abuse (from CIS blog)
- Collection of short resources for neuroatypical special needs abuse prevention
- Webinar recording Child Protection for Healthcare Professionals in Schools
- AISA Guidance Note on Teams and Internal Reporting
- Guidance for working with out of program and service learning providers Coming soon!
- ICMEC Child Safeguarding and Protection Resource Updates
Continued Commitment to Child Protection by Organizational Partners
Recent trainings show significant improvement in child protection prevention programming for schools and their organizational partners. Currently, all participants of workshops have programs in progress and the majority have at least a general policy and code of conduct established.
