Global Child Safeguarding Guidelines for Children and Adults

Children and adults are trained at SOS Children's Villages to report situations where child protection is at risk or fails. Likewise, if there is a suspicion of corruption. This registration and reporting system enables SOS Children's Villages to react immediately to protect children.

SOS Children’s Villages’ Child Protection Policy focuses on four key action areas: Awareness, Prevention, Reporting and Responding.

We place special emphasis on awareness and prevention to safeguard children and to improve the quality of the care they receive.

Any safeguarding concern that may arise is taken seriously and it is immediately addressed. This means that:

We build the capacities of co-workers, children, young people and families to recognise signs of abuse and how to prevent it.

We teach the use of tools such as positive discipline.

We work to eliminate harmful cultural practices.

Any reported child-safeguarding incident or concern is carefully assessed and, based on the results of the assessment; concrete actions are decided and put in place.

The SOS Children’s Villages Child Protection Policy defines different kinds of child abuse and explains how to safely report concerns. The policy also spells out the obligation of every SOS Children's Villages employee and associate to report any concern, suspicion or allegation of any child abuse. 

SOS Children's Villages South Africa creates an enabling environment for holistic (children and youth, asset protection and people) safeguarding. To report any safeguarding issues, please send an e-mail to: safeguarding@sos.org.za

The regulation on prevention and protection against sexual harassment, exploitation and abuse is based on our Code of Conduct, Child Protection Policy, Gender Equality Policy, and other parts of our integrity approach. It defines our focus on prevention to create and maintain a safe environment for all involved in the work of the federation. The regulation outlines our response mechanism to cases of suspected sexual misconduct towards any person, regardless of age, gender, sexuality, sexual orientation, disability, religion or ethnic origin.  
We take every child safeguarding concern or incident reported seriously and it gets thoroughly assessed. Based on the findings of the assessment, further steps are decided. One of these measures can be conducting a child safeguarding investigation. The guiding principle when dealing with any reported concern is that the safety and welfare of the child always come first. 

The user guide Listening and responding to individual experiences of past child abuse provides guidance on how to deal with and appropriately respond to allegations of past abuse, the specific nature of these allegations and the related challenges.

SOS Children's Villages member associations are accountable for responding to child safeguarding incidents within the frame of our Child Protection Policy and national laws. More information on these procedures can be found in the child safeguarding, reporting and responding procedures in member associations’ policy support document. The roles and responsibilities of the General Secretariat (GSC) in the reporting and responding process are further outlined in the Working Together To Protect Children policy support document.

If you are concerned about a child's safety, please click here to report it.