Mapping Child Abuse in Sri Lanka

There is a high incidence of child sexual abuse and exploitation occurring in Sri Lanka. The current trend in the country shows that there is lack of parental care and awareness which has led to abuse among children. In majority of the cases, the perpetrator is a close family member or a person well known to the family. According to the Deputy Solicitor General, nearly 45% of the cases heard in the higher courts in the country were estimated to be related to child abuse pointing at a high incidence of the problem in the country. Therefore, it is the need of the hour that parents and family members are made aware of situations where a child would be unsafe. It is also essential that remedial measures are taken when high risk or vulnerable family situations are identified.

Godakumbura workshop with children and parents in Sri Lanka

In the backdrop of this situation, Kantha Shakthi (KS) has developed an intervention which seeks to protect children abused due to vulnerable conditions at home. The intervention aims at sensitising field officers, grassroots level administrators, Community Based Organizations and Public Health Midwives on identifying vulnerable families and taking measures to prevent child abuse in these families.

KS believes that field officers and Public Health Midwives working at the grassroots level, visiting families to carry out their day to day activities, is the best target group to raise awareness on how to identify high risk and vulnerable families where children are at the risk of being abused. The specific activity of the programme is to raise awareness among field officers and midwives attached to Local Government (LG) Institutions to identify vulnerable families and taking preventive action to protect children of such families from being abused. Although it is very difficult for local NGOs to carry out such intervention, KS has been successfully able to enter into this arena through this programme and has been well appreciated by the Local Government now who support and recognise KS as a potential organisation.

Previously, field officers attached to LG institutions presented practical issues that they faced while dealing with vulnerable families and children from high risk families. They were not aware of the action that was required to overcome this situation. After the training programme they were able to identify the relevant officer or institution that they should link with in order to solve these issues. For e.g. midwives attached to the office of MoH did not know that they could link with the Social Service Officer at the Divisional Secretariat to solve issues related to children.

With the help of the training programme, now there has been greater awareness among filed officers on how to identify vulnerable families and on actions to prevent child abuse. They are now aware of other government institutions to link up with to solve issues of children at high risk of being abused. As a result, KS also gets requests from Local Government Institutions from other areas to conduct similar programmes.