Childrens rights in alternative care: Walk the talk!

A European conference on building capacity of the child care service workforce for better care quality

Training the child care service workforce on child rights is a necessity if the rights of children and young people are to be respected, protected and promoted when entering and living in alternative care, including during their transition to an independent life. In the framework of the EU-funded project “Training Professionals Working with Children in Care”, SOS Children’s Villages together with the Council of Europe, Eurochild and more than 40 national partners (Ministries, NGOs, social worker’s associations to name just a few) in eight EU-member states has recently developed “Realising Children’s Rights” a training module on child rights targeted at care professionals working in alternative care. The training module has been tested with more than 900 care professionals in the eight project partner countries. The Conference, which is the closing event of the project, will serve as platform to discuss the role child rights trainings for the child care service workforce can have in improving the European and national child protection systems, and in particular the alternative care system. The experiences from the project will serve as a reference point to the discussions.

Objective

The Conference is meant as a platform for starting a discussion on how to raise the capacity of the child care service workforce on applying a child-rights based approach to their work.

Participants

The Conference will benefit around 280 participants, consisting of representatives from the Council of Europe, Eurochild, national and local governments, social service workforce associations, child ombudsperson institutions and civil society.

Participation in the Conference is limited to invitees.

Representatives of governmental and non-governmental organisations, social service workforce networks, ombudspersons for children and academia were invited to respond to a call for expression of interest.