Each day when we open the newspaper, we see more and more heartbreaking stories of children who are victims of abuse and neglect. These stories are reflected in the soaring number of child abuse cases reported by the Hong Kong Social Welfare Department[1], with the highest percentage of children aged just 0-2 years old[2].
Protection of children is of the utmost importance to Mother’s Choice. In response to the child protection crisis in our city, we have dedicated significant resources over recent years to develop a set of robust and comprehensive child safeguarding measures that are held to the highest international standards yet also locally relevant.
There are four “international child safeguarding standards”:
Standard 1 – Policy: Mother’s Choice develops a policy that describes how it is committed to preventing and responding appropriately to, harm to children
Standard 2 – People: The organisation places clear responsibilities and expectations on its staff and associates and supports them to understand and act in line with these
Standard 3 – Procedures: The organisation creates a child-safe environment through implementing child safeguarding procedures that are applied across the organisation
Standard 4 – Accountability: The organisation monitors and reviews its safeguarding measures
We are pleased to announce that Mother’s Choice, in August 2019, has achieved Level 1 Certification with Keeping Children Safe, the only provider in the world of audit services based on international child safeguarding standards. Mother’s Choice is now part of a global network who are united in our commitment to protect the world’s most vulnerable children from exploitation and abuse.
Today, 100% of our staff have completed the “Introduction to Child Protection” training, an interactive, animated eLearning that teaches the importance of child protection and how to identify signs of child abuse, respond in a way that keeps children safe and follow our transparent reporting procedures. Upon completion, each person signs our Child Protection Code of Conduct. Now in the next phase, this training is being rolled out to the more than 500 volunteers who work at Mother’s Choice.
It takes a village to raise a child, and each one of us has a responsibility to make sure that we do all we can to keep children safe while they are in our care and when they attend our programs. We are very grateful to Macquarie Group Foundation for their support, on so many levels, and in making Hong Kong a safer place for children – thank you for being part of our village!
To learn more about our child protection policies and training at Mother’s Choice, please watch our video, and contact info@motherschoice.org if you would like to learn more.
[1] Social Welfare Department (2019) Newly Reported Child Abuse Cases
[2] Social Welfare Department (2017) Child Protection Registry Statistical Report
