WEB EVENT | 12 October 2020
Overall Key Learnings
Overall Key Recommendations
Sessions
The event focused on four children-centred themes
Inequality & the rights of
children in the city
Inequality & the rights of
children in the city
Empowering children as a civic
Empowering children as a civic
Indicators for safety of children in the city
Indicators for safety of children in the city
Advocacy, policy & children
centres public practice
Advocacy, policy & children
centres public practice
Inequality & the rights of children in the city.
This session looked at the rights of children in the city, the challenges that migrant and undocumented children encounter and the mental wellness of these children. The discussions also highlighted the importance of children’s voices in co-creating the City. It is crucial that children are provided with safety nets and they are not silenced. Presentations demonstrated how COVID-19 had an impact on the mental wellness of children especially those who are migrants in the country. The pandemic brought back strong memories of the hardship they experienced in their home countries and the trauma they experienced on their journey to South Africa. It is vital that the impacts of COVID-19 on children’s mental wellness are not ignored. This is a complex problem that requires systemic interventions if we really want to intervene for children’s mental wellness.
- Lack of collaboration – civil society / government – even in the provision of social services to children
- Role of ECDs
- Support for social workers?
- Both social workers and feeding schemes became less available at the times when they were needed most
- COVID revealed the fractures in our society
- Underestimated the long-term mental health consequences of COVID
- Children are not recognised, invisible, vulnerable
- Practical suggestions
- Children’s commissioner
- Recognition of children at the local level where they are not recognised as citizens at the national level
- Data on migrant children
Empowering children as a civic
This was a participatory session that demonstrated the importance of engaging children in community engagement processes. This session was led by the Trinity Sessions, Mimosa School and Play Africa. The three organisations demonstrated the usefulness of children in community engagement processes. These organisations engage children on a daily basis, they shared the amazing work that the children have been involved in and how they can perform to the best of their ability when they are in an enabling environment. This session demonstrated that children are capable of making decisions and they should be allowed to; they can participate in complex processes if they are enabled to and they should be allowed to be children and behave like children.
- Using play to help create active urban citizens
- Co-creation/ children’s voices heard
- Awareness through roleplaying – children choosing cases
- Democratic processes such as elections
- Platforms to capture children’s’ inputs
- Design thinking and human centred design
- Children’s feelings
- Xenophobia and related violence
- The impact of COVID-19 on children
- Inequalities in our society – need for shared public spaces
- Cities post COVID (safety and security/ green open spaces/ equipment for healthy playing)
- Imagination is key
- Networking is essential
- Problem solving
- Amplifying children’s voices.
Inequality & the rights of children in the city.
This session was part of the Safer Cities 40 days challenge and focused on generating recommendations of indicators for child safety in cities. The session provided an overview of what the eThekwini municipality and City of Johannesburg do to ensure that children are integrated as citizens in the City. There was a strong emphasis on how to integrate children not only as part of vulnerable groups but as a stand-alone when cities are making their plans.
- Embed in Social Crime Prevention monitoring tools
- Link to the built environment
- Re-imagine the role of the police
- Transversal budgeting – line items in all city budgets linked to safety (transversality is a journey)
- If we all understand it’s important, how do we make sure that the safety agenda is supported throughout the city.
- Building resilient and sustainable urban environments
- Indicators: we are talking about how to put children safely into public space, home, and institutions
- Measuring what we want more of (resilience, happiness, access to opportunities) not what we want less of (crime and violence).
- Tools to enable knowledge sharing: what to measure, who to measure, how to measure, interventions that work and don’t work.
Advocacy, policy and children centered public practice.
This was a policy and practice-based discussion that highlighted the importance of involving children in processes of decision making. The session indicated mechanisms to enable children to participate in processes. The discussions also reflected on the importance of ensuring that interventions respond to needs in order to improve lives.
- Placemaking
- Using placemaking to provide information of value in policymaking and civil advocacy Positioning children as urban researchers
- Theatre and performance
- Inter-dependence
- Parents do not allow children to go very far without them
- Awareness of child abuse – fear violence
- Parents making spatial decisions based on where their children are located
- The need for locally available amenities and facilities
- The need for good, safe, reliable, affordable childcare
- The need for safe public spaces and transport for both children and their carers
- Children’s vision of the city
- Separate children from women
- Difference between crime prevention and urban safety
- Need to have measures to allocate budgets to child-centred practice
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- Embed in Social Crime Prevention monitoring tools
- Link to the built environment
- Re-imagine the role of the police
- Transversal budgeting – line items in all city budgets linked to safety (transversality is a journey)
- If we all understand it’s important, how do we make sure that the safety agenda is supported throughout the city.
- Building resilient and sustainable urban environments
- Indicators: we are talking about how to put children safely into public space, home, and institutions
- Measuring what we want more of (resilience, happiness, access to opportunities) not what we want less of (crime and violence).
- Tools to enable knowledge sharing: what to measure, who to measure, how to measure, interventions that work and don’t work.
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