• Child trafficking

Child trafficking

This paper suggests a number of quality of care standards (QCS) for major factors in the victim recovery process for children affected by commercial sexual exploitation. Based on existing literature and practice, the following detailed recommendations are made for core areas of care giving:

• improving the child rights approach and child protection policies
• raising the standard of living and shelter services 
• developing the capacities of shelter staff 
• applying a multidisciplinary approach 
• improving the case management process 
• improving measures for the victim’s reintegration into the family and/or social community, including after-care 
• setting up enabling conditions for counselling/psychotherapy 
• improving knowledge, care and skills of counsellors and psychotherapists.
  

The main areas of capacity development needs in all of these fields are on three levels:

• human resources level: training of staff regarding child rights protection measures, communication and care giving skills, child participation tools/techniques, psychosocial counselling
  
• institutional level: developing a multidisciplinary institutional network of protection, services and care for victims, including linking and cooperation among different psychosocial, educational, health, legal and youth/children’s services.
  
• policy level: developing an enabling political and social framework for the protection of CSEC victims through legal and policy measures on a national and/or regional level and by linking prevention with rehabilitation efforts.
  

All activities in capacity or programme development and implementation must be rooted in a rights based approach that treats children and youth as rights bearers. The approach must also be gender and age-specific and geared specifically to the target groups, who are mostly girls.

What is essential for the successful development and implementation of QCS, is the establishment of a culture of quality standards for institutions and staff. This can be achieved through specific training and an ongoing process of development, improvement and monitoring of quality standards. The promotion of a QCS culture should be considered an integral part of personal, professional and institutional conduct. The development of quality standards for the care of CSEC victims should not take place solely in individual institutions. Rather, such standards should be embedded within a larger national and regional framework of actors and policies.

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