To be able to address possible child safeguarding risks, we believe that it is important to make child 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-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 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.