Children’s Rights
The Convention on the Rights of the Child is part of the legally binding international instruments for the guarantee and the protection of Human Rights. Adopted in 1989, the Convention's objective is to protect the rights of all children in the world. The Convention is the first legally binding international instrument of Children's Rights protection. That means that it establishes an obligatory force to the body of all the rights it stipulates.
That implies that the States that ratified the Convention are obligated to respect and to ensure that all rights it establishes in the name of children are respected.
The Convention comprises 54 articles that establish the body of all children's civil and political rights, as well as their economic, social and cultural rights. It also advocates the protection and promotion of the rights of special needs children, of minority children and of refugee children.
This Convention establishes 4 principles that must govern the implementation of all the rights it advocates:
Non-discrimination: The Convention applies to all children, whatever their race, religion or abilities; whatever they think or say, whatever type of family they come from. It doesn't matter where children live, what language they speak, what their parents do, whether they are boys or girls, what their culture is, whether they have a disability or whether they are rich or poor. No child should be treated unfairly on any basis.
Best interest of the child: The best interests of children must be the primary concern in making decisions that may affect them. All adults should do what is best for children. When adults make decisions, they should think about how their decisions will affect children. This particularly applies to budget, policy and law makers.
Right to life, survival and development: Children have the right to live. Governments should ensure that children survive and develop healthily.
Respect for the views of the child: When adults are making decisions that affect children, children have the right to say what they think should happen and have their opinions taken into account.
SAL Consulting endorses the Convention on the Rights of the Child and works towards promoting the implementation and monitoring of these conventions through:
Providing regular opportunities for children and young people to participate in the making of decisions that affect their lives
Providing regular opportunities for children and young people to express their opinions and acting on those opinions where possible
Providing the parents and other people significant to children and young people opportunities for continued and ongoing participation where in the best interests of the child or young person
Providing information on advocacy and supporting children and young people to identify their advocacy needs
Facilitating contact with advocates and advocacy groups
Supporting self-advocacy, if possible, as well as more informal substitutes of advocacy
Complying with mandatory reporting responsibilities.
Providing appropriate training, support and supervision for staff to able to support children and young people who have experienced trauma, abuse or neglect
Reporting risk of significant harm to the Child Protection Helpline on 133 627
Developing Positive Behaviour Support Plans for children and young people with complex behaviour support needs
Delivering effective outcomes for children and young people and making a positive difference to people's lives.
Providing children and young people with a good experience – this means children and young people feel that the service we provided was good and they had a positive experience.
Proactively managing risk to prevent where possible the occurrence of incidents or adverse events; and where such events occur there is a culture or responsiveness and transparency or learning Ensuring all staff are supported in acquiring necessary skills and knowledge to delivery support, which meet the needs of children and young people.