“REPSSI Regional Psychosocial Support Initiative 2015 Forum in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe.
September 1, 2015, 15:30 pm-17:00 pm, Kazuma Room
This session was moderated by Kelley Bunkers, Child Protection and Welfare Systems Technical Director, 4Children. The session was a follow up to the 2013 PSS Forum, where the 2013 UNICEF, IATT, World Vision document Building Protection and Resilience and REPSSI’s draft position document on psychosocial support and child protection systems were presented. This session used recently launched follow-up report Prevent and Protect as a framework for the session. Within this framework, the session incorporated initial findings related to the 4Children supported work of developing guidance on case management and referral mechanisms including case examples of promising practices of OVC implementing partners from the field.
The session learning objectives included:
1. To provide existing evidence on how HIV influences child protection risks and how child protection issues can increase vulnerability towards and impact of HIV in girls and boys in different age groups.
2. To learn from existing promising practices that foster linkages between HIV and child protection actors, utilizing concrete examples from organizations that have integrated HIV and child protection case management, referral mechanisms and the workforce.
3. To share available tools, SOPs, programming ideas and contacts that will facilitate participants’ ability to develop linkages within existing programming interventions.
4. To consolidate new and emerging promising practices from the field, that will contribute to the ongoing collection of case studies. This will inform the development of guidance, by 4Children, on case management, referral mechanisms and the workforce.
Kelley Bunkers presented an overview of the evidence, entry points where intentional linkages between child protection and HIV programming for children can be made using examples from the Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Zambia case studies. The presentation was 30 minutes.
After that, there was a World Café session using three small groups of 10-15 people. Presentations and discussions in the three groups were led by: Government of Zimbabwe and WEI Bantwana Zimbabwe, WEI Bantwana, Uganda, and Zvandiri, Zimbabwe. The issues they each presented on include:
-Zimbabwe Government/UNICEF: What is the role of policy in helping to promote and foster linkages between child protection and HIV? Explain what some of the key steps were in the process and important lessons learned.
-Zvandiri: Why is it important to include children and youth in the development of programming and policy interventions and what is the most effective way to do so in a meaningful way?
-Uganda WEI: What is the most critical information that child protection workers should have about HIV and that health workers should have about child protection? How can this information be shared and what are important lessons learned from WEI’s experience of peer training in Uganda?
The group discussions were quite lively and provided ample room for questions. Conversations continued after the session concluded.
A new tool for establishing entry points and making intentional linkages was also shared with the group. Kelley explained that this is the first time it is being shared and comments and suggestions are welcomed.
A webinar on HIV and CP linkages will was be hosted by OVCSupport.net on Thursday, September 17th. It is hoped that additional webinars, highlighting the projects included in this session will be scheduled in the next several months.
-To download the presentation, please click here
-To download the tool “Protection and resilience: A simple checklist for why, where and how to coordinate HIV and child protection policy and programming”, please click here”