the Education and Training Project

Human Rights Awareness for School Managers (PDF Document)

Since it’s establishment in 1997, the provision of training and education has been an important and integral part of the work of the Children’s Law Centre. Education and training is clearly embedded within the Children's Law Centre mission statement:

"Helping young people, their parents and professionals work with and understand laws which affect children."

Increasing awareness and understanding of children's rights with organisations and individuals is the first step to making those rights a reality. Over the years this work has developed into many new and exciting areas

The Children's Law Centre recognizes the huge potential and challenge currently existing for the promotion of children's rights in Northern Ireland. Developments such as the Belfast agreement and the resulting legislative changes have provided opportunities for the development of a comprehensive training service, focusing on children's rights as human rights, which will meet the needs of all stakeholders. Such external developments have placed a welcome but substantial demand upon the Children's Law Centre in relation to training provision.

The Education and Training project is a well-established unit within the organisation, which also encompasses the successful youth@clc project. The Education and Training project is currently staffed by The Education and Training Coordinator who works in partnership with other members of staff to ensure aims and objectives of the project are being met.

Aims and Objectives

AIMS

• Provide an effective, quality training service to meet the needs of children and young people, staff, members, organisations working with and on behalf of children and parents, children and young people.

• Monitor all developments in training provision within a current framework of human rights and legislative changes.

• Recognise potential for the development of training within the context of the Northern Ireland peace process to promote children and young people's rights.

Objectives

• Coordinate a regular training needs analysis among all stakeholders, including staff, organisations and young people.

• Design and prepare a range of accessible training materials, resources and visual aids to support and enhance training provision.

• Produce training courses (accredited and non accredited) to meet the needs of all stakeholders.

• Design and produce pro-active and participative education and training packages and resources for use specifically with young people.

• Monitor legislative changes and identify opportunities for the subsequent development of training courses to increase awareness of such developments.

• Coordinate the production and administration of an annual calendar of training events focusing on specific and topical issues in relation to children's rights.

• Provide internal staff development training to meet the specific training and development needs of Children's Law Centre staff.

• Design, in partnership with youth@clc and the Youth Support and Development Worker, a calendar of education and training events to meet identified needs of young people.

• Provide creative and interactive seminars and workshops with children and young people in education and youth settings to enable them to explore rights as outlined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

• Deliver training courses, workshops and seminars, focusing on raising awareness of children's rights, upon request, to a wide range of agencies and individuals.

• Develop and maintain a reference bank of training information and materials.

• Evaluate and monitor all aspects of training provision using a process of social audit to ensure the maintenance of a professional and effective service.

Education and training within the Children’s Law Centre takes many forms including:

The Training Calendar

Each year a training needs analysis is carried out with members of the Children’s Law Centre and a wide range of other organizations. A training calendar is then developed to meet the needs of all stakeholders. Each year the calendar offers a wide range of participative and informative courses on topical and relevant children’s rights issues. The calendar is always well received with courses usually being booked out well in advance. Evaluations of training calendar courses are always very positive indicating that meets are being met. Past evaluations have the following comments:

Provision of tailored training

In addition to the training calendar, training is provided on an ongoing basis to a range of voluntary and statutory organizations. The Children’s Law Centre can offer a range of courses including:

1. Turning Children’s Needs into Rights!

A one-day course exploring the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and looking at ways this treaty can be implemented into policy and practice of organizations working with children and young people in Northern Ireland

2. Children’s Rights as Human Rights!

A one-day course exploring the implication the Human Rights Act (1998) places on organizations working with children and young people.

3. Hitting and Hurting

A one-day course exploring the issue of physical punishment of children in the home. This course identifies key current legislative and consultative developments in this area and enables participants to consider actions for taking the issue forward in their own work.

4.    Bullying, a Children’s Rights Issue!

A one-day course examining the context of bullying for young people within Northern Ireland. This course looks specifically at this issue within an education setting and explores the key legislative instruments that surround it.

The Children’s Law Centre can also tailor courses to suit organizations specific needs. All courses are developed within a framework of current legislation, domestic and international, and aim to enable organizations to evaluate how they can use such legislation in practice, to promote the rights with children and young people whom they work with.

Working with young people

In addition to the provision of training for adults, the Education and Training project offers interactive and creative workshops for children and young people in schools and youth groups. This has become a busy part of the project as curriculum changes within the education system have placed an onus on schools to address issues of rights, responsibilities and citizenship with their pupils.

As this element of training expands and develops, the Children’s Law Centre has recognized the need for a pro active and innovative approach to this area of work and would like to commit time and resources to the development of peer education and production of education packages for primary and post primary children looking at issues of children’s rights in Northern Ireland.

Interface with Youth@clc

The Education and Training Project encompasses the successful and well-established youth@clc project, the advisory youth group of the Children’s Law Centre. This project was established in 1999 and consists of young people drawn from various backgrounds across Northern Ireland who have an interest in advocating and lobbying to ensure that children’s rights are brought to the fore of the public agenda.

An exciting development for this group has been the pilot and production of a successful and innovative peer education programme. The “Road to Rights” peer education programme has been designed by the Children’s Law Centre to enable young people age 16 – 20 to explore issues of human and children’s rights and to develop group work and facilitation skills to enable them to take this knowledge into the community in the form of peer education.  The course has been accredited through the Northern Ireland Open College Network (5 credits at Level 3, equivalent to A level standard).

The course has had a tremendous response from schools and youth groups with the first run being fully booked and a long waiting list compiled for the next run. This is reflective of the innovative nature of the course and the lack of existing opportunities for young people in this area.

Evaluation

The Children’s Law Centre believes that evaluation is an essential process in the development and delivery of training to ensure that a quality service is being provided to meet the needs of stakeholders.  A comprehensive framework of evaluation has been developed and embedded within all elements of the Education and Training project to ensure that outputs and outcomes are monitored and assessed on an ongoing basis. This framework has been developed within a social auditing framework and aims to analyze the extent to which the project is meeting its social objectives.