32.
14
31.9
Quality Care Standards for Children’s Homes have also been developed
to provide guidance to the GoSL on the regulation of residential child care
facilities and defines minimum standards for residential child care facilities.
31.10
Various tools have been developed by the Family Tracing and Reintegration
(FTR) network. The FTR network is a group of child protection organizations
that have signed a memorandum of understanding with the MSWGCA to
support family tracing and reunification of children who are separated
from their families. Through the network there is a coordinated response to
family tracing and reunification for separated and unaccompanied children.
The FTR network has developed a directory of service providers with the
capacity and willingness to carry out FTR as well as Reintegration Guidelines
which provide guidance on family tracing, reunification and reintegration
of separated and unaccompanied children, children in conflict with the law
and children in different forms of formal and informal care.
Responsible role players have received ad hoc training on the preceding tools and
governing policies and laws. For example, 20 staff from MSWGCA/local councils
and child protection organizations were trained on FTR. Civil society plays a key
role in supporting the GoSL in providing training given the internal capacity and
resource constraints of the various responsible government departments. There
have however been a number of developments to ensure the systematized provision
of quality training by the GoSL to all officials responsible for the implementation
and administration of the governing policies, laws and programmes. For example:
32.1
The MSWGCA is, with the support of UNICEF-Sierra Leone and PLAN,
operationalizing a national training centre for all social development workers.
Similarly, a standardised curriculum has been developed and is nearing
completion. The training centre will be available for building capacity of
officials in all ministries responsible for children, primarily through sectorspecific certificate programmes.
32.2
Similarly, the justice sector has a national Judicial Training Institute for
the training of all judicial and support staff. Through the institute, training
has been provided on juvenile justice, gender justice. Specialised training
has been provided on the administration of juvenile justice for personnel
involved in the dedicated special juvenile court in Sierra Leone. In addition,
a number of justice personnel involved in child justice have been sent to the
Institute of Child Rights in Switzerland for in-depth training.
32.3
The Ministry of Justice is currently in the process of implementing the Local
Courts Act and in this regard training, which includes training on women and
children’s rights, has been developed and is being provided to the presiding
chairmen, vice-chairmen, local court clerks and local court supervisors.
The MSWGCA has also developed a handbook for the local courts to support
them in understanding the rights and processes related to children.
Government of the Republic of Sierra Leone Initial Report on the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child 2002-2014