GreaterGood South Africa

Our Mission Statement

Vision

RAPCAN is widely recognised for its contribution towards creating a safe society where children are acknowledged as rights-holders, and the rights of all are respected. We strive for a society where adults take responsibility for the safety of children, where children participate in the realisation of their rights and are able to achieve their full potential.

Mission

RAPCAN is committed to ensuring that the rights of children are realised, by working within a preventative framework towards the protection of children.

We work to build effective prevention and responsive measures relating to child victimisation and offending through direct service delivery, capacity building, resource development and dissemination and advocacy. Our work is strengthened by strategic partnerships and the participation of children.

We believe in respecting diversity, dignity and the equality of all people, and providing a professional, high quality, evidence-based service.

About Us

RAPCAN is an acronym for Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect. Since the organisation was started in 1989 by the University of Cape Towns Department of Peadiatrics and Child Health, it has focused its attention primarily on child abuse prevention.

This focus was (and still is) made tangible by means of training and awareness workshops, and the production and dissemination of resources. In the last few years, with a changed political situation in South Africa, this focus has expanded and incorporated legislative advocacy. Even more recently, RAPCAN has moved into providing support for children entering the criminal justice system.

Our approach at RAPCAN is two-pronged. We focus on building capacity within the child protection system and at community level to respond appropriately to our extraordinarily high levels of child abuse and neglect. And we focus on long-term prevention of child abuse and neglect. The complexity of the causal factors relating to child abuse and neglect and violence against children demand an equally complex set of responses.

We are convinced of the need to address these issues on a number of levels and via different strategies. Our programme work is focused on four different but inter-related groups of activities. Our core business is training and materials development for training around both prevention and rehabilitation. We maintain a Resource Centre, open to the public, which contains an extensive collection of relevant material in a variety of media.

We undertake a significant amount of legislative advocacy, and we work with and within the criminal justice system to improve certain aspects of the child protection system.

RAPCAN was registered as a Section 21 Company (i.e. a not-for-gain company in terms of the South African Companies Act) in 1997, and registered as a non-profit organisation (NPO number 010-744). The Board of Directors consists of 9 members and we have 12 staff members. The office is in Observatory, in Cape Town in the Western Cape, although RAPCAN works nationally and indeed throughout the SADC region.

The fact that RAPCAN was started in response to the need for education and training in the field of child abuse and neglect, and was set up initially as a research programme has shaped the unique services it now offers. Whilst most of the organisations with whom we work, such as Safeline, Childline and NICRO, are involved in counseling children, we emphasize child abuse prevention strategies.

RAPCAN is committed to working actively within a non-racist, non-sexist, developmental and rights-based framework.

Achievements

• Membership of the International NGO Advisory Panel to the UN Global Study on Violence Against Children
• Development of a programme for boys focused on resilience and more appropriate roles
• Long-standing partnership with the Department of Education delivering workshops to educators dealing with positive discipline
• Extension of the Child Witness Project to the sixth Sexual Offences Courts
• A key role in the Childrens and Sexual Offences Bills Working Groups
• Member of the NGO Group on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child
• Development of the Child Witness Project Tool Kit
• Development of the Healing Manuals and Workbooks
• Development of the Positive Discipline Tool Kit
• Member of the National Child Protection Committee

Programmes

Advocacy

• RAPCAN participates regularly in joint campaigns and lobbying around various issues of child abuse as they arise and become relevant
• Examples concern issues such as child labour or sexual exploitation, children infected and affected by HIV / AIDS, and the safety of children as pedestrians
• This work is always done in partnerships with other organisations, and RAPCAN is a key member of a number of relevant networks
• These include the Childrens HIV / AIDS Network (CHAiN), the Children and Violence Network, the South African Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, and the Western Cape Network on Violence Against Women

Legislative Advocacy

• Our involvement in this area falls into our broad strategy for long term prevention through the development of appropriate state policies, guidelines, programmes and legislation (which are often the outcome of campaigns)
• We participate regularly in the legislative process in South Africa by making submissions to new legislation while it is in bill form
• Examples of legislation in which we intend participating in this manner in the future include the Juvenile Justice Bill, the Sexual Offences Bill, the National Health Bill and the Child Care Bill
• In addition, we are engaged in monitoring the implementation of the Domestic Violence Act, the new Sexual Harassment Protocol developed for Western Cape Schools, and the Child Abuse Protocol developed by the Western Cape Department of Social Services (both the latter in conjunction with non-Governmental organisations including RAPCAN)

Resources

The Resource Centre

• This library and study area contains one of the most comprehensive and thorough collections of resources on child abuse and other forms of abuse in South Africa, which has been collected and developed over the years, and underpin the training programmes
• Users include RAPCAN staff, staff and students of tertiary education institutions, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), community based organisations (CBOs) and interested individuals

Resource Production

• In addition to training, direct information provision and dissemination is one of our prevention strategies
• We are constantly devising new and effective ways of channeling information.
• Our flagship publication \\\\\\\\'A Trolley Full of Rights\\\\\\\\' is available in English, Afrikaans and Xhosa, as is our range of posters
• We also stock and supply anatomically correct dolls, and a wide range of posters in different languages

Resource dissemination

• Our web page (www.rapcan.org.za), is an electronic resource for anyone wanting to find out anything about child abuse and neglect issues, and child rights issues in South Africa
• It is linked to several relevant local and international site, and new sites are added on an ongoing basis
• In addition, the site is a source of training and resource materials, and interested parties are able to negotiate training workshops on line

Training

• In our training interventions, we work intensively with and within communities to build the capacity, which we then support on an ongoing basis, to understand the context and causes of abuse, recognise it, and respond appropriately
• This aspect of our work involves an initial period of analysis of what the problems are perceived to be, the identification of key role-players, the provision of training and awareness-raising to a Forum of these role-players, and then the provision of workshops to the range of entities within the community - service-providers (both non-governmental and governmental), and to children via the schools
• We also work with professional groups such as medical, social work, criminal justice system and paramedical professionals to enhance their capacity to work appropriately with abused children
• This also involves inputs into the training, at tertiary level, of future professionals at local universities
• Finally, we engage with the education system to ensure the inclusion of RAPCAN material in the life-skills curriculum

The range of workshops options includes the following:

For children

• Sexual abuse awareness and personal safety workshops for children,childrens rights workshops, self-esteem and positive self-image, prevention workshops for youth at risk sexuality workshops for young people

For adults

• Basic child abuse awareness and prevention workshops, training of trainers workshops, positive discipline workshops for teachers

Rehabilitation

Counseling

• Counseling for victims of child abuse, and their friends and family is offered on an ad-hoc basis, in order to address the regular disclosures of child abuse made to staff members, either in person, telephonically, or following a training programme
• Although we always refer the victim to a more appropriate agency, we believe that effective and sympathetic counselling is necessary, particularly as it is often the first time a victim discloses the abuse

Child Witness Project

• Children are not always effective witnesses as they are frightened within a court environment to the point of being immobilized, and they do not always know what is expected of them
• Thus, children need to be prepared effectively for the court process in a quest for the truth
• RAPCANs court preparation and support programme aims to empower children and prepare them for the court experience by providing them and their parents/caregivers with appropriate legal knowledge, skills and emotional support
• The programme is presented in both an individual and group format, and the parents/caregivers are an integral part of the preparation process
• The programme is implemented by highly trained and experienced lay counsellors
• They support the child and family from when the childs case enters the Justice system until after conviction and sentencing
• Debriefing is then offered as a final intervention in order to help the children deal with the outcome of the case as children often find a conviction of an offender just as traumatic as an acquittal, as in most cases it is someone known to the child
• The counsellors are a support person for the family and children
• They also form part of the network of professionals of the child protection team, thus strengthening the services available to children
• The service is currently available at the Khayelitsha (021 360 1471), Wynberg (021 799 1947), Parow (021 939 6134), Cape Town (021 461 3183) and Atlantis (021 572 1003) Sexual Offences Courts

Formal Affiliations

• Western Cape Provincial Plan of Action
• Western Cape Network on violence against women
• South African Young Sexual Offenders Programme Consortium
• Gun Control Alliance
• Childrens Bill Working Group Secretarial member
• ACESS (the Alliance for Childrens Entitlement to Social Security)
• ChildrenNOW Network Secretariat Chair
• Sexual Offences Court Task Team
• Sexual Offences Bill Task Team
• Child Justice Alliance
• South African Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect Chair (2004) assault survivors within the court system.
• The work of the NGO Advisory Panel to the UN Global Study on Violence Against Children commenced, and a meeting was held in Geneva in June 2003.
• The start of this work was delayed, and the time-frame of the study has now been extended to 2006
• We served as Vice-Chair of the South African Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (SASPCAN)
• Trafficking in Persons Task Team
• African Network for the Prevention of and Protection from Child Abuse and Neglect (ANPPCAN)
• Southern African Anti-Trafficking Network
• OneWorld (Africa)
• NGO Group on the Rights of the Child
• NGO Advisory Panel to the UN Secretary Generals Global Study on Violence Against Children
• International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect (ISPCAN)

Goals and Objectives

• Ensure an appropriate and rights-focused statutory framework which governs issues with relevance to and for children
• Ensure that policy and regulations protect and promote the rights of children
• Ensure that RAPCAN is represented on key local, national, regional and international networks in order to change attitudes and influence policy and thinking at a range of levels
• Raise awareness about child abuse and neglect and its roots causes with the intention of impacting on attitudes and behaviour and preventing abuse and neglect
• Build the capacity of a range of role-players to respond appropriately and sensitively to disclosures of child abuse
• Raise awareness and knowledge about the rights of children and of children as human beings with rights in their own right, with a particular focus on alternatives to corporal punishment
• Work with boys and young men at risk of sexual offending
• To provide access to a wide range of relevant material on child abuse and neglect, childrens rights, and prevention to our own staff; students; researchers; parents; educators; practitioners; service providers
• To disseminate a range of prevention-focused resources, including childrens story books dealing with the rights of children, multi-lingual posters, information sheets, brochures and training materials
• To maintain a web site with relevant information about the organisation and the issues it deals with
• Reduce the secondary traumatisation experienced by child witnesses by ensuring that they are prepared and supported through the process
• Enhance the quality of the evidence given by child witnesses, and thus impact positively on the conviction rate in sexual offences cases