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AFRUCA's Work in the UK
Child Protection Training for African Parents in London
Project Location: London (Boroughs of Hackney, Haringey, Harrow and Croydon)
Project Contact: Angela Muthoga, Family Outreach Worker, AFRUCA
Project Funders: Big Lottery Fund
Project Information:
AFRUCA’s ability to provide direct support to African parents is further strengthened by the establishment of its Child Protection Training and Awareness Project for African Parents in London. This is a five-year project operating primarily in Croydon, Haringey, Harrow and Hackney boroughs.
Through this project, AFRUCA seeks to support parents who are unfamiliar with UK laws and who have strong cultural expectations about the way in which their children are raised. Cultural practices and beliefs can be beneficial to all members of a community, however there are some that can be harmful to a specific group, such as women and children. As a result of these harmful cultural practices, many African parents are having their children taken away by the government due to accusations of child abuse or what is called “significant harm”. Many African children are therefore ending up in the care of local authorities having been removed from their parents.
The overall aim of the project is to help improve the quality of life of African families in London and reduce the number of African children going into care.
This project has three key components:
- Promoting positive parenting skills i.e. getting the best out of a child without using some of the traditional methods deemed inappropriate or illegal in the UK
- Organising training workshops for parents to enable them gain knowledge and understanding of the key laws and regulations regarding child protection so they can better safeguard their children from abuse
- Offering support and advice to parents dealing with local authority children services
Between December 2007 and April 2009, over 400 African parents from the Congolese, Eritrean, Cote d’ivore , Moroccan, Zambian, Kenyan, Equatorial Guinean, Cameroon, Sierra Leone ,Angolan, Ugandan, Somalian, Ghanaian, Rwandan, Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Nigerian communities in London have taken part in our training workshops.
Parents have commended our workshops for helping to improve their skills and develop their knowledge of child protection rules and regulations. This project focuses on four London boroughs chosen either because of the high number of children who are subject to child protection plans, or because contacts already existed with members of the Local Safeguarding Children’s Boards (LSCBs) and community groups. A close working partnership with the LSCBs has been crucial for developing training materials, delivering the training courses and planning advice Road-shows for 2008-09. Individual children’s services have made contributions by providing information and explaining child protection processes, statistics, and legislation.
Community groups are usually the first point of contact for African families in crisis, they have also been essential in the development of the project. They have been able to provide direct contact with parents, and identify other groups through which AFRUCA can expand the project. They have played an active role in organising and running training sessions. Organisations we have worked with include the Family Action in Hackney, African Women’s Welfare Group in Haringey, Congolese Financial project as well as the Chettle Court Rangers FC also in Haringey, Rise Community Action in Hackney The African Child Youth Centre in Haringey, two Angolan community groups N’Kanda (the African Woman family Academy and Support) and HoldHands in Haringey, the Centre for Francophone African Development (CENFACS) in Croydon and the Development Support Agency in Harrow.
Intensive work has been undertaken to support some families experiencing difficulties in their relationship with social services or other agencies; in other instances advice has been provided to practitioners working with these families.
AFRUCA hopes to strengthen this area of work through the provision more intensive support for African families at risk of breaking down. We are also looking to extend this programme to other local authority areas across London.
For further information about this project, click here.
Project Update:
The project is now in its second year and we have started working in 2 new boroughs; Islington and Southwark.
We have made some positive and strategic changes to the projects implementation.
- We have been successful in reaching out to a wide range of parents from very diverse African backgrounds including Angola, Tanzania, Morocco, Kenya, Senegal, Ghana, Nigeria, Somalia, Eritrea, Rwanda, Congo, Sudan as well as Zimbabwe. To this end we are now translating our training publications into French. This will make it easier for our French speaking parents to readily participate in our training sessions as well as being able to easily read and understand the reference material they receive.
- Training sessions are now tailor-made to suit different community groups especially when dealing with cultural practices from different parts of Africa.
- Some training workshops will be held as part of cultural and religious events organised by other community and church groups so as to achieve maximum outreach to African parents.
- Some sessions will be joint parent and child workshops which will help parents understand some of the issues migrant children deal with here in the UK.
- In expanding our “What is?” series of publications, we have recently completed and published our “What is Witchcraft abuse?” publication and are currently working on “what is sexual abuse?” publication due to be launched in April 2010.
Last updated October 2009
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