Africans Unite Against Child Abuse

AFRUCA's Work in the UK

Child Protection Training for African Parents in England Project

Project Location: Manchester, Newcastle, Liverpool and London (Boroughs of Hackney, Haringey, Southwark and Islington)
Project Contacts: May Ikeora – Regional Office and Ebube Kanu, London Office
Project Funders: Big Lottery Fund and The Department for Education

Project Background

AFRUCA’s ability to provide direct support to African parents was strengthened by the establishment of its Child Protection Training and Awareness Project for African Parents in 2007. Currently in its third year, this project operates primarily in the London boroughs of Haringey, Southwark, Islington and Hackney. Due to the success of the London project, we were able to replicate the programme in the North of England in 2009 with funding from the Department for Education. This is a two year project managed from our Regional Office in Manchester and targeting three cities: Manchester, Liverpool and Newcastle.

At AFRUCA we recognise that in order to help protect children we need to work with those who have the most impact on a child’s life: the parents. This project provides support for parents who are unfamiliar with Child Protection regulations in England and who have strong cultural expectations about the way their children are raised. Cultural practices and beliefs are beneficial to all members of a community; however there are some practices that cause harm to children. The UK government takes a strong stand on Child Protection. Many African parents are falling foul of the laws on Child Protection which leads to accusations of “significant harm” with children being removed and placed into the care system.

The Child Protection Training and Awareness for African Parents Project has been established to work with African parents across England to improve the quality of life of African families in the country. We do this by promoting positive parenting skills, providing knowledge regarding child protection, offering support to parents with children in the child protection systmen and providing information about various issues that affect African communities and their children in the UK.

Training Somali men in Haringey, North London

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

Since 2007, AFRUCA has worked with over 20 different African communities across England, with over 1000 parents taking part in our training workshops. Some of these communities who have benefited from our programme include the Congolese, Eritrean, Cote d’ivore, Moroccan, Ugandan, Somalian, Ghanaian, Rwandan, Ivorien, Zimbabwean, Tanzanian and Nigerian communities.

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 and three locations in the North of England (Manchester, Newcastle and Liverpool) 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 Child Protection Road-shows. Individual children’s services have made contributions by providing information and explaining local child protection processes, statistics, and legislation.

Parents training event at Barnardos Gregory Place Manchester

Community groups are usually the first point of contact for African families in crisis, they have also been essential in the development of this project. They have been able to provide direct contact with parents, and identify other groups through which AFRUCA have expanded this project. They have played an active role in organising and running training sessions.

Parents watching an Afruca video presentation
Organisations we have worked with includes; in London: the Family Action in Hackney, African Women’s Welfare Group in Haringey, Congolese Financial project as well as the Chettle Court Rangers Youth Football Club 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 Hold Hands in Haringey and the Centre for Francophone African Development (CENFACS) in Croydon. In the North of England: Manchester Refugee Support Network (MRSN), African Community Advice North East (ACANE) Newcastle, Zimbabwe’s Women’s Organisation, Pentecostal Baptist Church, Liverpool, Christ Evangelical Ministries and Barnardos Gregory place Manchester.

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 of 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 England.

Project Update:

Our project continues to receive very positive feedback from parents and other stakeholders. Nevertheless we are working hard to ensure it continues to meet the needs for which it has been established:

Faith groups remain the oldest and most stable infrastructure, where the important issues affecting the community are addressed. Therefore, it is important that faith groups are aware of the issues around Child protection, and they have the ability to deal with any cases that may arise. Consequently, AFRUCA continues to work closely with Black majority Churches and mosques across England, delivering free workshops to parents and faith leaders, and holding regular consultative meetings with faith leaders.

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 have now translated our training publications into French. This will make it easier for our French speaking parents to readily participate in our training sessions and be 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.

Parents event training at Redeemed Church of God Rock of Redemption in Camberwell, London

We continue to ensure our events and training workshops link up with locally organised cultural and religious events organised by other community and faith groups so as to achieve maximum outreach to African parents.

Some sessions are held as “intergenerational events” with parents and children in attendance. This 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 (English and French) and are currently producing other titles in the series.

Please see our upcoming events section for more information on our parent workshops and Roadshow events.

Last updated June 2010