To be able to address possible child and youth safeguarding risks, we believe that it is important to make child and youth safeguarding a topic for everyday discussion. All co-workers,children, young persons participating in our programmes and their caregivers and co-workers,need to have an opportunity to talk about these issues and share their thoughts, concerns and ideas without any fear of harm or reprisal. This can be very challenging however; we believe that we need to break the silence.

Everyone in contact with SOS Children’s Villages, be it a co-worker, caregiver, child and/or young person, needs to know that his or her voice is heard and respected.

We work to ensure that child and youth safeguarding topics are well communicated to all relevant stakeholders including children and young people and this includes:- prioritising and communicating child safeguarding topics to all respective functions and departments;highlighting the importance of adopting a CS perspective in developing documents like recruitment.

We have child and youth safeguarding teams who have the responsibility to organise meetings and workshops for caregivers, other co-workers, children and young people where child-safeguarding topics are raised and discussed openly.