Network Events
CSC Network Forum 2022
Welcome to this year’s CSC Network Forum
Welcome video from Pia MacRae, CSC CEO
Learning from the past, looking to the future
Five years on from UN General Comment 21 on children in street situations
The General Comment on Children in Street Situations was published five years ago, in 2017. At this year’s CSC Network Forum, we will use the space to reflect on successes, challenges and learnings in the five years since this first authoritative guidance on States’ obligations to street-connected children was published. We will also consider how we build on what has gone before to shape the future of policy and practice for children in street situations.
Sessions will cover the challenges and successes of practical implementation of specialised solutions for street-connected children, working with local and national governments for long-term change, as well as workshops on fundraising and using children’s images in communications, to support the CSC Network’s work.
Watch our video round-up of the CSC Network Forum 2021
See our summary of 2021’s network forum, including links to session recordings.
The conference will be entirely virtual – click on the links below to register for sessions. If you have any trouble registering for sessions, please email communications@streetchildren.org for support.
Tuesday 1 November
10.00 – 11.00 (GMT)
Keeping street-connected children on the agenda: General Comment 21
In this first session, we will be introducing the key theme of the network forum, General Comment 21 (GC21) on children in street situations .We will discuss how the General Comment came about, and why it is important for practice, policy, and advocacy change. We will also cover the work CSC has done and continues to do using GC21, as well as upcoming planned activities.
Alongside this, we will hear from network members who have used General Comment 21 as part of their efforts to drive change in practice, policy, and advocacy, and provide the opportunity for participants to discuss how GC21 has or could be useful for their work, as well as any challenges in using it.
Click here to register for this session
11.30-12.30 (GMT)
Possibilities for alternative care provision
Our second session of the Network forum will focus on alternative forms of care, and we will hear from two fantastic speakers. Jonathan Hannay MBE will speak to us about ‘The Family Guardian Programme’, a kinship care programme in Brazil that has been running for more than 10 years, and Glad’s House Kenya will tell us about their foster care programme they have been running with the help of street workers in partnership with parents from the local community in Mombasa.
Click here to register for this session
13.00 – 14.00 (GMT)
Roger Hayes and Maggie Eales Memorial Lecture, delivered by Najat Maalla M’jid, UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General on Violence Against Children
Dr. M’jid, a medical doctor in paediatrics, has over the last three decades devoted her life to the promotion and protection of children’s rights. She was Head of the Paediatric Department and Director of the Hay Hassani Mother-Child hospital in Casablanca.
Dr. M’jid was a member of the Moroccan National Council on Human Rights and founder of the non-governmental organization Bayti, the first programme addressing the situation of children living and working in the streets of Morocco.
From 2008 to 2014, she served as United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Sale of Children, Child Prostitution and Child Pornography. Dr. M’jid also worked as an Expert-Consultant for national and international projects, strategies and policies relating to child rights’ promotion and protection.
She has vast experience in the development of national policies on the protection of the child, and has worked with several governments, non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations.
She also worked as a lecturer in Moroccan and international universities on child rights’ protection, promotion, programming and monitoring, as well as social and development policies. A member of several regional and international non-governmental organizations and networks working for children’s rights, Dr. M’jid was also involved in the training of social workers, law enforcement, teachers, judges and medical staff.
Wednesday 2 November
09.00 – 10.30 (GMT)
Building trust on the streets
This session will look at two different organisations approaches to building trust on the streets in Bangladesh and Ghana, followed by an opportunity to discuss the approaches and challenges to building trust with street-connected children and families so that you can meaningfully engage with them. This will be an interactive session where participants will also be led through an activity around trust building.
Click here to register for this session
11.00 – 12.00 (GMT)
Street-connected children and health
Our Health focused session will focus on both research and practice. We will first hear about Dr Shona Macleod’s early findings of her research focused on access to healthcare for children in street situations. We will then hear from CINI about the health findings from their vulnerability mapping research, then a briefing on their current health programme that enhances street-connected children’s access to immunizations and finally two videos of street champions sharing their experience.
Click here to register for this session
12.30 – 14.00 (GMT)
Reframing our approach to children’s images
The way we use images and stories from children has a huge impact on their rights and wellbeing, and is something that is slowly beginning to shift. Based on the OverExposed campaign recently launched by Chance for Childhood and inspired by Glad’s House Kenya’s work on image use and story telling, this session will look at how image choice impacts the narrative we want to present as a sector and the challenges in reframing thinking towards using images and stories in a way that is truly child-focused.
Thursday 3 November
10.00 – 11.00 (GMT)
Upholding street-connected children’s civil rights and freedoms
This session will explore GC21’s guidance on street-connected children’s civil rights and freedoms in detail. We will explore ways in which curtailments on civil rights and freedoms impact the lives of street-connected children and our work with them, and reflect upon possible approaches to ensuring that children have their civil rights and freedoms upheld.
Click here to register for this session
13.30 – 14.30 (GMT)
Enabling access to education: a practitioner’s lens
This session will explore the role of frontline practitioners in securing access to sustainable educational opportunities for street-connected children and offer participants the chance to share challenges and solutions.
Click here to register for this session
Friday 4 November
10.00 – 11.00 (GMT)
Working with the police
The relationship between street-connected children and the police can often be challenging. In this session, we will be exploring the challenges and benefits of engaging directly with the police in efforts to make GC21 a reality, as well as hearing from stakeholders who have worked directly with police and street-connected children about the efforts they have made to catalyse a positive relationship between the two.
Click here to register for this session
12.30 – 14.00 (GMT)
Writing a winning fundraising application
This session will be led by Bill Bruty, the founder and Director of Fundraising Training Ltd. Bill has been in the world of fundraising for nearly 40 years, spending nine years as the fundraising and marketing director of a major conservation organisation in the UK. Fundraising Training Ltd is the world’s leading provider of online training in grantseeking.
Bill will walk through the different steps in producing a winning fundraising application, including assessing the common questions which appear on applications and how answers to these are viewed by grantmakers, and how to write for impact while adhering to strict word counts.
Click here to register for this session
14.30 – 15.00 (GMT)
Closing session
Join us for a final reflection on the last four days of sessions, to discuss where we go next in ensuring street-connected children’s rights are protected, respected, and fulfilled, and to celebrate our amazing network members, colleagues, and friends.