To further strengthen CAL’s commitment to child protection every CAL centre now has a Child Protection Officer. We held the first full day training for the Child Protection Officers in Kandy, where both centre managers and the new CPOs came together for special training sessions. As part of the sessions, CAL’s child protection policies were outlined and the roles and responsibilities of the child protection officers were discussed.

By the feedback we received from participants the most helpful aspect of the day was the case consultation session. In this session we gave staff a framework for discussing child protection problems within families. This framework was then used to better understand the families they work with and find possible solutions. We also did some role play that focused on one case and how we could discuss child protection problems. The CPOs returned to their centres to share their knowledge and use the same framework with other staff.

Also included in the day were sessions run by various staff on providing therapeutic support in CAL Centres and the government child protection/ probation system in Sri Lanka. We plan on running the next specialist training session to develop the CPOs skills and knowledge further in October.