Deal to support child services

A MEMORANDUM of understanding (MoU) was signed to strengthen the referral for children to access safe house services.
The MoU was signed in Port Moresby on Friday between the Office of the Child and Family Services and the Consultative Implementation and Monitoring Council’s family and sexual violence action committee.
The plight of children seeking shelter in safe houses are often linked to their mother’s family and sexual violence woes.
Under the MoU, the services and committee will deliver key trainings to empower and up-skill safe house workers, the majority being volunteers.
Committee executive officer Wallis Yakam said: “We are achieving milestones by equipping you with extra skills.”
“Hopefully, this training extends to other centres.
“We need partnerships and collaboration among organisations because the problem is too big for any one organisation to deal with.
“We move forward by using the laws that we have and the referrals.
“Many of our survivors do not know where to start in terms of reporting.
“Some of them are scared and traumatised. So we have to raise awareness of referrals that we develop, so that entry point has to be made aware to survivors and everyone out there.
“Services deputy director and programme coordinator Otto Trur said the Lukautim Pikinini Act 2015 and other relevant acts could only be fully implemented by training officers, especially child protection officers as well as partners and child protection volunteers. Given that Friday was International Day of Disability, Trur said the act covered provisions on children with disability and that community child protection volunteers were trained on this aspect.
The signing of the MoU also concluded a three-day Volunteer Child Protection Training for 15 frontline workers from safe houses in Port Moresby, Lae and Goroka.