The Ministry of Gender, Children and Social Protection (through UNICEF) formulated the policy in February 2015 and it has been implemented on a pilot basis by the Ashanti regional office of the department since April 2016.

At the maiden Regional Child Protection Committee meeting in Kumasi, the Ashanti Regional Director of the Department of Children, Rev. Stephen Darfuor, disclosed that as part of the activities to effectively implement the policy, the department had selected five assemblies out of the 30 in the region in that regard.

He named the assemblies as Asokore Mampong and Obuasi municipalities, Ejura Sekyeredumase, Adansi South and Amansie West District assemblies.

He said the department had begun working within the selected five assemblies since last year and it looked forward to selecting an additional five to add them to the pilot.

He added that it was important to design child and family welfare programmes and activities to more effectively prevent and protect all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation.

He said ensuring effective co-ordination of the child and family welfare service at all levels and empowering children and families to better understand abusive situations and make choices to prevent and respond to situations of risk formed part of the major proponents of the policy.

Strengthening community structures

He said to achieve the objectives and the vision of an effective Child and Family Welfare delivery, 11 strategies had been put in place.

They include the need to strengthen community structures and early intervention through social protection and improved child and family welfare services.

Rev. Darfuor also mentioned other strategies as regular co-ordination and improved information and data management, empowering children and young people, empowering families through social dialogue and change.

Rev. Darfuor said in order to make activities in the communities effective, religious and opinion leaders who had roles to play in the implementation of the policy would be selected for training.

He added that 15 Muslim and 20 Christian leaders and 15 chiefs and opinion leaders were yet to be selected for training for them to become conversant with the roles they should play.

That to him showed the extent to which both the traditional and formal settings could be used together to strengthen community structures as far as the implementation was concerned.

The Ashanti Regional Child Protection Committee meets four times in a year — once every quarter— and it is made up of representatives from the Gender Ministry, Social Welfare, Legal Aid, Judicial Services, Prisons, Immigration, Domestic Violence and Victims Support Unit (DOVVSU), Attorney General’s Department, National Commission for Civic Education (NCCE) and Commission on Human Rights and Administrative Justice (CHRAJ).

Some child rights advocacy groups, including the Defence for Children International (DCI) – Ghana, are instrumental in assisting the committee to deliver.