Welcome to the Course and The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action

Welcome to “Protecting Children during COVID-19 and Other Infectious Disease Outbreaks,” a six-week course developed by the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action in partnership with its members.

Globally, almost all countries have reported cases of COVID-19, and many are experiencing outbreaks. Infectious Disease Outbreaks (IDOs), such as Ebola Virus and Corona Viruses, including COVID-19, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus (MERS-CoV), disrupt the environments in which we live, often resulting in significant challenges for children, families, caregivers and the workers and services that support them. IDOs may exacerbate the situation of children, parents and caregivers, and the communities who already face extremely adverse circumstances, including those in diverse humanitarian contexts.

Many frontline child protection professionals across the globe, such as yourself, continue to rise to the challenge of finding creative ways to continue to support children, families and communities during COVID-19 and other IDOs in contexts that are difficult to predict.

This course is focused on the implications of COVID-19 and other person-person transmitted IDOs in humanitarian and development settings for children’s well-being and protection and will support practitioners and policy makers in putting the child’s safety and well-being at the center of responses.

The coming weeks will take you on a journey through six interconnected modules:

Week 1: Framing COVID-19 and other IDOs for Child Protection Workers

Week 2: Centrality of the Child: Risks, Protective Factors and Participation

Week 3: Child Protection Strategies to Protect Children during COVID-19 and other IDOs Part I

Week 4: Child Protection Strategies to Protect Children during COVID-19 and other IDOs Part II

Week 5: Working with Teams in COVID-19 and other IDOs – Safety, Well-being and Project Management

Week 6: Child Protection Services, Intersectoral Partnerships & Governments: Advocacy and Accountability

The course will encourage you to think about applying the content to your own context and to reflect together with other practitioners in a safe co-learning experience where sharing ideas is at the core of everyone’s learning.

By the end of the course, you will be able to:

• Assess the context set through public health measures and elaborate on how this affects protective and risk factors for children in all stages of the COVID-19 Outbreak
• Describe the main child protection risks during COVID-19 or other Infectious Disease Outbreak in your context through a socio-ecological and developmental lens
• Explain the centrality of child participation through all stages of the programme cycle and identify ways to foster safe child participation
• Outline approaches to adapt child protection prevention and response programming in line with the guiding principles and standards
• Describe how to jointly implement with other sectors to protect children
• Identify key actions to support risk informed programming and contribute to system strengthening in future Infectious Disease Outbreaks

About The Alliance

The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action is the global network of operational agencies, academic institutions, policy makers, donors and practitioners working in the area of child protection in humanitarian action. Co-led by UNICEF and a rotating organization, currently Plan International, The Alliance envisions a world in which children are protected from abuse, neglect, exploitation and violence in humanitarian settings. Its mission is to support the efforts of humanitarian actors to achieve high-quality and effective child protection interventions in both refugee and non-refugee humanitarian contexts.

You can learn more about The Alliance, including categories of membership, on our website.

This course is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID): Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance and Department of State’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration as well as funding from OAK Foundation. The contents are the responsibility of The Alliance and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government and OAK Foundation.

We’re very pleased to welcome all of you and look forward to the diverse and exciting discussions that will be generated.

Your Task
Are you familiar with FutureLearn? Did you know that you can:

• Progress through the course ‘weeks’ at your own pace – you have eight weeks from enrolling to complete the course and gain your free course certificate.
• Complete a step by marking it complete.
• Complete a week by marking all steps in the week complete.
• Navigate between weeks to see what’s coming up, or to go back to review or complete a step.