Protect Your Child Online

Popular charitable organization World Vision tried to make a difference in rural communities of Elbasan, Lezha, and Vlora, Albania by teaching them new teaching and parenting techniques. Many parents and children together with medical personnel and teachers participated in the trainings set during the summer.

The child protection manager of Albania’s branch there, Blerta Petrela, believed that the training would raise awareness in the communities about child abuse and at the same time teaches parents better ways of working with their kids. During the trainings, many participating parents confided thinking of beating as one of the most effective ways of disciplining their kids while several children voiced out their belief that such disciplinary measures were the right thing to do.

Child labor appears to be a pervasive problem in Alabanian’s rural communities. There, child labor is a common problem and it is not unusual to see children in middle or high school not to attend classes for the sake of earning a living. Reports also show that in Albania, one out of two experiences physical abuse while one out of three experiences the same thing in school.

World Vision acknowledges that proactively seeking for a safer and better world will take time to fulfill but the trainings they’ve provided are sure to take a closer step to their dream.

United Nations Children’s Fund Forges On
The UNICEF is currently working hard to implement the Convention of the Rights of the Child in Jamaica. It consists of fifty-four articles and two optional protocols. The law was ratified by the Jamaican government in 1999. Although today’s Internet affords children various benefits that were not available in the past, globalization and the rapid changes in today’s life have made people neglect social problems contributing to the worsening situation of children.

Another law on children’s rights established the Office of the Children’s Advocate. In Jamaica, one out of four children grows up in poverty. Children are, in fact, more likely to continue growing up in poverty than adults and the elderly.

The United States Speaks Up for Children
Even the United States isn’t safe from online sexual offenders and other predatory individuals. This month, a judge had even challenged state officials to continue doing their jobs and work on preventing innocent lives of children from being sacrificed.

All around the world, other government and non-government agencies, together with commercial and non-profit organizations, are working hard to promote the rights of children. This can hopefully get rid of online criminals guilty of abusing children permanently in the future.

UK’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP), together with the government-funded agency BECTA, have developed Cybercafe, a new feature in the Think-U-Know section of their website. Cybercafe utilizes a variety of characters, namely Sam, Ali, Chloe, Jason, Sunil, and Griff, to educate children about different ways of communicating online.

CEOP Chief Executive Jim Gamble says that his office has found out how children are becoming more sophisticated with their use of the Internet in the passage of time. But this doesn’t lessen the dangers they’re facing because their naivete and innocence remains. He further explains that these dangers are witnessed firsthand by their office, with CEOP receiving approximately ten reports every month.

Gamble also says that the figures and information provided were not meant to be taken as “sensationalist headlines”. Rather, they were there to make people aware of exactly what harm could befall their children if left unsupervised and uneducated. He made it clear that CEOP was in favor of children taking advantage of the opportunities offered by the Internet but only if it doesn’t compromise their safety.

Cybercafe is also designed to offer tips and advice for parents and teachers.

Joining Hands with Internet Watch Foundation
The efforts of CEOP have become more successful by cooperating with agencies like the Internet Watch Foundation or IWF. This year, IWF celebrated its first Awareness Day, working with Internet Goliaths like Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL to boost awareness of children abuse online. The Awareness Day introduces, among other things, its new phone hotline to allow the public to report websites displaying child pornography.

The non-profit organization was established in 1996 and had since then provided online help and support, with the help of government endorsement, to the public. IWF was where individuals could report about websites with undesirable content. IWF focuses on three major areas of concerns: UK-based websites with content deemed to incite racial hatred or displaying criminally obscene content as well as websites with global hosting of child pornography.

US State Governor Teams Up with Communication Company for Online Child Safety
Charities are not the exclusive defenders of children’s Internet safety. There are also government officials and commercial organizations doing the same and the team-up of Verizon and the governor of Georgia is one good example.

Gov. Sonny Purdue held a forum on child Internet safety. There, Verizon also announced that its non-profit subsidiary, Verizon Foundation, would award $35,000 to a pair of companies for developing unique programs to promote and protect children’s safety online.

Internet Watch Foundation is one agency devoted to protecting children from various online dangers. And fortunately for the youth, there are other organizations like IWF dedicated to fighting for their safety.

Internet Watch Foundation and Child Online Protection
For its first Awareness Day, the Internet Watch Foundation or IWF worked with different companies and agencies to enlighten the public about the current trends of online child sexual abuse and how they can help prevent it from worsening. Yahoo, MSN, and Tiscali are just some of the websites helping out the IWF in presenting their advertisements.

According to the organization, one and a half million adults in the UK had already seen images of online child sexual abuse. Although the country had been successful in ensuring that less than 1% of such websites originate from the UK, this does not mean that UK users will no longer be able to access them. IWF urges everyone to be vigilant to effectively close down all of them.

Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP) Helps Out
Another agency known for its advocacy for children safety is the CEOP. It has recently designed a new program to educate parents and teachers about the online risks children are subjected to and what they can do about it. The program would be able to benefit children from eight to eleven years old and covers a comprehensive range of activities. It includes activities for children as well like the Cybercafe feature of its website. There, children are tested on their ability to do the right thing in different SMS or online scenarios.

Participating schools would be able to access the various services offered by the CEOP website and will benefit from being able to better help their students in cases of cyber-bullying and other online dangers as well as teaching them the dos and don’ts in communicating through mobile phones and emailing.

Internet Crimes against Children Task Force Fights to Stay Alive
Difficulties in obtaining funds and technological improvements make it more difficult for the Internet Crimes against Children Task Force to continue working for the safety of children online. The organization spends its time and resources surfing the Internet, monitoring online conversations, and following possible leads to online sexual offenders but these activities are becoming increasingly difficult to perform when the face of technology changes so rapidly and they don’t have enough funds to keep up with the changes.

Children seem to become more vulnerable preys in the Internet as statistics show that one out of twenty people would encounter images of child sexual abuse while surfing online. Worse, at least third of those displays the “most extreme” images.

The Numbers on Online Child Abuse
Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) reports that three out of ten victims featured in online child sexual abuse images seem to be below six years old, with 5% of them seemingly younger than age two. More than 75% of them were girls. While Britain has effectively reduced chances of such images originating from their territory, British Internet users can still, however, access the said photos.

The IWF Makes a Stand
For 2007, IWF celebrates their first IWF Awareness Day. Famous online names like News International, BBC, and Sky have all publicized details of IWF’s reporting system to enlighten online users to know what steps they need to take when they encounter images of child sexual abuse. During the IWF Awareness day, various advertisements would be distributed and individuals are encouraged to email their contacts regarding the celebration.

The IWF has twenty-eight hotlines at work to provide help all around the globe. The charitable organization also works with various government agencies and legal authorities to better remove websites displaying such images. This year, they had shared information of a little over two thousand websites to international hotlines and other law enforcement agents with the help of Interpol and the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Center (CEOP).

The United States and Russia have been identified by IWF as hotbeds for such images. The US has, however, also the best record for closing down websites found guilty of child sexual abuse. Russia is almost the opposite because the websites there are managed by organized criminals.

What You Can Do
Meanwhile, there are things that adults can do to help protect their children online. The Internet can become especially dangerous when children find themselves chatting with strangers. Adults must be prepared and able to warn their children about it and advise them the right and responsible way of using the Internet.

Parents should communicate regularly with their children. They should be encouraged to confide to their parents about their activities in the Internet. Utilizing monitoring software should be considered as well. This will not only allow parents to monitor what their children are doing but also prevent them from accessing specified websites.

Last July, public complaints and pressure from US state governments had made MySpace review its list of members and cancel accounts of more than twenty-nine thousand individuals who have been identified as sex offenders. Major social networking sites have been under fire due to the ease in which pedophiles and other offenders are able to contact minors through their services. This month, under similar pressure, Facebook has promised to become more vigilant in protecting its underage members.

After receiving several complaints about Facebook’s inappropriate content, New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has set up an investigation to test the website’s system. After registering several accounts, his office then sent out complaints to Facebook. The investigation revealed that there were indeed problems with the way Facebook handled such complaints. The website’s chief privacy officer Chris Kelly admitted as much and pledged to renew their vigilance about complaint handling.

The modified system is designed to prioritize complaints about harassment and pornography. Complainants can then expect the system to respond within twenty-four hours and update them with the steps they’ve taken within twenty-four hours. An independent examiner is tasked to scrutinize the new system’s performance. Meanwhile, Cuomo’s office is working on developing a comprehensive age verification system for all social networking sites.

The results of the investigation are not the only worries faced by the popular social networking site. Facebook was recently sued by Lindsey Abrams, a mother from Indiana, for sending X-rated mobile text messages.

Web 2.0 enables Facebook users to send SMS messages to individuals connected to their accounts. When people change their numbers but fail to update their contact information in Facebook, the website ends up sending the SMS messages to the wrong recipients.

According to Abrams, this causes Facebook to send thousands of unauthorized SMS messages, many of which contain “adult content”, to innocent individuals. The complainant also calls to question Facebook’s integrity, wondering if the error in the system is due to gross negligence or intentional design.

Abrams also expresses annoyance for having to pay for the messages sent to her phone. Furthermore, she describes the messages as “often obscure and graphic” and “can mess with your mind”. As the SMS messages also arrive at different times of the day and senders are difficult to identify, the content of the messages can be “intimidating or unsettling”. Abrams is concerned about the possible effects of the message on American children who mistakenly receive them.

A law expert says, however, that it is possible for the courts to dismiss the suit due to the US Communications Decency Act, which prevents websites from being liable for their users’ actions or words.

Children are extremely fragile creatures, both physically and emotionally.  Protecting them is the foremost concern of parents and guardians.  In the absence of these people, however, it falls to society to provide help and support.  Unfortunately, there are many difficulties in protecting children that sometimes confound even the best of intentions.  Some of these difficulties are as follows:

Reliance on reports in order to detect abuse
One difficulty in protecting a child is that someone – a family member, teacher, friend or neighbor – has to find the obvious signs of abuse first before they can alert authorities.  If the child does not complain or signs of abuse are not evident or if no one comes forward regarding their suspicion, the child may never get help in time.

Some abuses occur in the home.
It becomes more difficult to protect children if they receive abuse from people who are supposed to care for them – parents, guardians and caretakers.  According to NSPCC, 16% of young children suffer from serious maltreatment from their parents, 7% suffer from serious abuse, with 1% experiencing sexual abuse. 

It’s difficult for caseworkers and authorities to predict which reports of abuse are serious enough to warrant arrests and intervention.
Another difficulty in protecting children is that while there are abuse cases that require direct intervention by the authorities, there are also some that only need support such as counseling.  As such, it’s tough for workers to determine which cases will be resolved and which ones could get serious. 

There might also be numerous cases bombarding the system involving over-zealous concerned citizens who might overreact.  As such, it can be dangerous, especially for children at high risks since they may not get enough help.  Cases must be assessed carefully to ensure that the right amount of attention and resources are used. 

Caseworkers are overloaded and stressed.
In the U.S. alone, child protection agencies receive over 50,000 reports related to child abuse and/or neglect.  About 66% of these reports contained information that prompted investigations and follow ups. 

Work involving abused children can also be emotionally and physically exhausting.  With the number of cases child protection workers have to face, the work of providing protection for children can be difficult to do.

Some cases are unfounded.
There have been cases of reported child abuse that were false or exaggerated.  (parenthood.library.wisc.edu/Melli/Melli.html)

Protection of children extends beyond initial help.
Another difficulty in protecting children that is rarely discussed is the problem of placement for children who have nowhere else to go.  In the U.S., the state can file for a petition that will terminate its parental rights if the child has been in foster care for the last 15 months.  The result: parentless children, the number of which is increasing.
(parenthood.library.wisc.edu/Melli/Melli.html)

Should judges in the Children’s Court be trained in child protection issues?  According to Foster Care Queensland (FCQ), the answer is yes.  In this area in Australia, only one magistrate specializes in children’s issues.  The rest are often faced with hearing petty crimes.  This means that over the course of doing their regular duties, magistrates miss out on certain issues that are extremely important when it comes to handling child protection cases.

The problem with a lack in child protection training
One child protection case that pushed FCQ officials to propose training for magistrates is that of three sisters in Queensland.  The magistrate handling the case had denied a request to allow the girls to return to the foster family who cared for them.  This, following the presentation of evidence showing that the children were not safe with their birth mother.

According to Elizabeth Fraser, Children’s Commissioner, it is important for magistrates to understand the nature of child protection and development.  However, she also agrees that requiring magistrates to specialize in child protection and child-related issues might lead to delays.  This is because there are just too few of them to be able to handle all cases in a time-efficient manner.

Fraser also adds that Child Safety officers also have to understand the legal system well.  This is to ensure that child protection issues may be approached properly.

Child protection training and children’s needs
Each child that needs the state’s protection has unique requirements.  This makes it important for child protection agencies and organizations to consider the different factors involved in each case.  Factors such as the child’s age, parents’ age, educational, cultural and economic backgrounds can impact the type of approach child protection workers must use.

What is being done
The case in Queensland still awaits resolution pending an appeal from Margaret Keech, the Child Safety Minister.  However, in countries such as the U.K. and the United States, organizations and educational institutions are promoting child protection training to both government and private groups.

In Scotland, for example, the formation of an inter agency group for the assessment of the need for child protection training is being considered.  This group is being eyed to provide training using a multi-disciplinary approach.  A nationally-recognized and implemented series of training materials on child protection is also part of their function. 

They released their first bulletin regarding child protection training in 2005.

In the U.S., child protection training and related courses are being added to college and university curricula.  One such example is that being offered by Winona State University.  Its purpose is to train students who will be joining law enforcement and child protection agencies and organizations in the future.  This is in collaboration with the NCPTC or National Child Protection Training Center.

Authorities and workers who handle cases related to child protection have certain rules and procedures to follow.  This is to ensure that the rights of the child, the accused and that of his parents and family are respected.  Child protection procedures are also in place to ensure that the correct process is applied.  This will prevent any possibility that a child is left without support or assistance simply because a caseworker missed a simple step.

What is the purpose of child protection procedures?
Child protection procedures, such as those in place in the U.S. and the U.K., are designed to help teach individuals and organizations how to work in tandem in order to support and safeguard the wellbeing of children.

These procedures are meant to train frontliners and professionals to ensure that children are not hurt or harmed when taken under their care.  It is considered their ‘legal duty’ to immediately provide assistance to children who need protection and take reasonable steps to ensure that children receive the care they require.

It is also important for family members, teachers and guardians to be aware of these child protection procedures to ensure that children’s rights are protected as well. 

Who prepares child protection procedures?
The child protection procedures, such as those implemented in London, England, are the product of extensive research and consultation.  Agencies and resources used include children’s services, research studies and other practice-based organizations and evidences.  The procedures were put in place with guidance from the government and based on prevailing service standards.

Standardizing child protection procedures
There are certain sectors in the government and private groups that seek to maintain appropriate standards for child protection procedures.  In the U.K., for example, the Charity Commission is tasked to monitor organizations and inquire about their procedures and policies.  The Commission also ensures that organizations working in child protection are legally entitled to perform such tasks.

Standardization of child protection procedures is also important to ensure that children are assured consistent protection, regardless of who they are or where they live.  Child protection procedures also ensure that the processes are able to meet the needs of abused or neglected children in an efficient manner.  This means being able to provide them with the right care and attention from the appropriate agency.

Where to find information about child protection procedures
Details, additional information and child protection procedures may be downloaded or viewed through these websites:

1) http://www.careandhealth.com/Pages/Story.aspx?EntityID=a57b43e6-833b-406f-98fa-257e53e91ba8
2) http://www.charity-commission.gov.uk
3) http://www.allwalesunit.gov.uk

The Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act was enacted by the U.S. government in 1974.  Since then, child protection has become a significant part of many programs in governments and private organizations around the world.  To recognize the need to sustain programs and implement them effectively, the Child Protection Day is being celebrated across the world. 

Thanks to the efforts of UNICEF, the United Nations and numerous other organizations, the Child Protection Day is now recognized and acknowledged on the 1st day of June each year.  Activities and events are prepared to celebrate this day, which are participated in by many organizations, government agencies and private individuals. 

In the KwaZulu-Natal province of southeastern Africa, for example, Child Protection Day is celebrated with a series of programs centered around a theme.  The most recent celebrations were meant to raise awareness in promoting children’s rights and protection from exploitation and abuse.

Elsewhere, countries as far away as Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have launched their own celebrations to promote Child Protection Day.  The events are participated in by UNICEF representatives in the areas and are promoted to children and adults alike.

The purpose of Child Protection Day
For UNICEF, the celebration of Child Protection Day is the culmination of their work to promote child welfare for many years.  By setting aside one day, organizations and governments all over the world hope to focus on the needs of children.  These include their rights to a good life, education, health, nutrition and protection from exploitation and abuse.

The Child Protection Day is also a way for organizations and governments to assess their laws and programs regarding child safety.  It is also an opportunity to educate different sectors of society about the nature of child safety and protection.  Most importantly, it is also a chance to determine whether programs that are already in place are sufficient for the promotion of child protection and safety.

Child Protection Day in your country
Child Protection Day is already a recognized event globally.  To find out what activities and events are being organized in your country or state, check with your local government or go to www.unicef.org and click to a link to your country. 

Although it is celebrated on June 1st each year, Child Protection Day is often a series of events.  In some countries, it can last for as long as a week prior to the day itself.  Events are usually performed in collaboration with different child advocacy groups and can include presentations, workshops, exhibitions and contests.

The legal framework that supports child protection can be quite complicated, particularly because it involves more people than just the child in question.  In handling one case of child abuse, for example, child protection courts have to deal not only with the child but also his parents, guardians, case workers, teachers and law enforcement individuals. 

On top of that, there are also the evidences that need to be gathered from several sources.  This is why the handling of child protection cases requires a multi-disciplinary approach.

Changing the system?
In the U.S., majority of child protection courts have opened to accept child-related issues.  However, there are about 21 more states that close proceedings on child protection.  An open court system, according to supporters, will help children more and encourage transparency.  It will also place more responsibility on the shoulders of case workers and authorities involved in child protection cases.

The problem with child protection courts is that laws that cover children and related issues need to be changed.  According to David Richart, a child advocate, many children are separated from their parents even without solid, just cause.  In some cases, this can cause unnecessary use of resources and distress on the part of the family involved.

The challenge, says Richart, is to ensure that there is one standard policy that can be followed by case workers consistently, regardless of their location.  It is also important for child protection courts and involved authorities to inform children and their families of their rights. 

And lastly, funding should also be provided for the training of officials and for the use of legal services.

Improving the courts
Certain steps are now being taken to ensure that child protection courts are able to offer relevant and appropriate assistance and service to children.  In Michigan, for example, a CIP or Court Improvement Program was created for preventing child abuse, improving legal services to high-risk families and for the promotion of family preservation.

This is to ensure that in cases of child abuse or suspected child abuse, no child removal, investigation or litigation is performed unless deemed absolutely necessary.  This way, court processes involving child abuse and foster care may be assessed and subsequently improved.

Why child protection courts must evolve
Every parent or guardian involved in a child abuse will be participating in a court case.  In cases where evidence points to the necessity of intervention, the child may even be removed from the care of the parent.  The child protection court will then have a judge issue a court order for the protection of the child in question.  This is just the beginning.

State courts (sometimes including municipal and county courts), are tasked to resolve the varied issues regarding child protection.  They must also work closely with caseworkers from child protection services.  As such, there is a need to ensure that laws and legal practices are in place to guarantee that children are offered protection. 

It is also important that the legal system provides the appropriate approach to ensure that the rights of all involved are maintained.  Through these steps, child protection courts will be able to ensure that children receive the best possible attention to their cases.