The Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund (NMCF), through the Child Safety and Protection (CSP) Programme, has been contributing to solving child protection challenges for South African children for more than 25 years. The main goal of the CSP programme is to ensure the safety and protection of children (aged 0-18) in the areas where they live, learn, and play (i.e., home, school, and community). To do so, it focusses on areas with a high prevalence of violence against children (VAC) and employing the following core components:
learning and quality improvement of implementing partners (IPs); community building (establishing and facilitating child protection consortia); capacity development (delivering accredited child protection training to the child protection workforce); and advocacy.
The first two components will be achieved through grant agreements with IPs in priority districts, while the latter will be achieved through the CSP programme team in collaboration with strategic partners. Thus, the central premise is that if the CSP programme provides financial and technical support to IPs and the child protection workforce, establishes child protection consortia, and promotes advocacy, then there will be increased child safety and protection in families and communities.
The CSP Programme exists to create protective environments that prevent and respond to abuse, neglect, and VAC in households, schools, and other spaces where children live, learn, and play. The CSP Programme aims to contribute solutions to ending VAC[1], particularly in communities in South Africa where crime statistics as reported by the South African Police Service (SAPS) indicate the greatest incidence. For this programme, ‘children’ and ‘violence against children’ are defined as follows:
VIOLENCE AGAINST CHILDREN:
Any acts of emotional, sexual, or physical maltreatment, neglect, or abuse inflicted upon children by any person/s anywhere, including digital platforms.
CHILDREN:
Girls, boys, and all persons of non-binary gender younger than the age of 18.
A graphical summary timeline of the CSP programme for the years 2016 to 2021 is provided below. For further detail on the history of the programme, refer to the CSP Critical Reflection and Review Document (2022).
[1] In previous documents this has been referred to as ‘Child Abuse’. However, violence against children (VAC) is a more comprehensive term which includes child abuse.
NMCF recognises there are numerous challenges the country and its people are facing. The organisation has identified the following most pressing challenges that it would like to contribute towards addressing:
The CSP programme will work with the other NMCF programmes and corporate services units to contribute to addressing the aforementioned priority challenges in the following ways:
The key strategies that CSP will employ to address violence against children are:
Programme specific description of conceptual frameworks
The CSP Programme is underpinned by a theoretical framework which:Is influenced predominantly by Bronfenbrenner’s (1986) ecological system’s theory focusing on the quality and context of a child’s environment; with the particular aim of strengthening child and adolescent (0-18 years) safety and protection.Adopts a life stage approach, recognising that risks, gaps, challenges, and needs are different across the various childhood stages, and that abilities, interests, and socio-cultural roles vary similarly.Employs a community-building approach to increase the social capital of target communities to support and protect their children and adolescents. 
The implementing partners will operate in the following priority districts. As illustrated in the map below, a total of 25 priority districts have been identified for the strategic period (2023-2027). A subset of 12 priority districts will be targeted in the first phase (2023) (green pins) and the remaining 13 priority districts will be targeted in the second phase (2025) (red pins). The priority districts specific to CSP for the first strategic period are shown in purple text.
