South Africa is facing a bigger crisis than just load-shedding; we have children as young as 6 addicted to porn! How are we dealing with this, and how are our social workers and organisations working in the child trauma space able to navigate this mine filled landscape, whilst still over-burdened and almost burnt out post 2 years of lock-down.
On the 5th and 6th of October 2022, Jelly Beanz, a non-profit organization established in 2010, supporting children and families who have experienced trauma, abuse and neglect, in partnership with UNICEF, will be hosting their 13th annual Child Trauma Conference. The theme for 2022 is – Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Finding a beacon of hope in uncharted waters and bringing together our social workers into a single place to help them deal with empathy fatigue, burn-out and giving them tools and new techniques to help them grow and continue to be of service to our children.
Ingrid von Stein, host of Business Insight on www.ebizradio.com caught up with Edith Kriel, CEO of Jelly Beanz to find out more about the current landscape in SA, how our social workers are coping and what will be covered and shared at the conference.
Setting the scene: “The Child Trauma Conference is a platform where the consequences of Covid19 and the impact on child protection and mental health will be explored by identifying what creative, on-the-ground African ideas, responses and inspirations were developed during the pandemic, which can be taken back to communities for up-scaling,” explains Edith Kriel, Executive Director of Jelly Beanz. “Delegates will be leaving with skills and capacities enhanced within a nurturing environment for engagement, interaction and multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral collaboration. The conference is intent on taking much needed care of the 250 practitioners and stakeholders that worked so hard during the pandemic, who themselves are now need of care and being appreciated!
Despite commitment to human and child rights treaties (The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of Children) Africa remains challenged by high levels of child rights violations, including all forms of abuse and exploitation, trafficking, and involvement in armed conflict either as perpetrators of violence (child soldiers as this is only a SA conference – maybe we should take the armed conflict out? and gang members) or as victims of armed conflict.
Violence not only has a profound impact on the development potential of children, but also increases the possibility that victims will make poor behavioural and relationship choices when they are adults. The cost of child abuse to the South African economy alone is estimated to be in the order of R173 billion (Fang, Zheng, Fry, Ganz, Casey, Hsiao and Ward, 2017)[1] do you think this stat might be too old? This drain on the economy further emphasizes the need for an appropriate response to the urgent need to both prevent and respond to violence against children.
“African children were extremely vulnerable before Covid-19,” says Kriel. “The Covid19 pandemic has impacted every aspect of children’s lives, and this has significantly exacerbated all these challenges. As a result of the pandemic and lockdown we are faced with more than 60% of South African children living below the poverty line, reliant upon a national school feeding scheme as their only means of receiving a nutritious meal a day. Add to this increased levels of physical and sexual abuse, cyber bullying, substance abuse and rising levels of children being sexually exploited on line as well as children themselves watching pornography which leads to further abuse of children, it is no surprise that suicide is the second leading cause of death for ages 15yrs to 24yrs!” can we change this last sentence – I am not sure why it makes me uncomfortable, but surprise and suicide don’t belong in the same sentence (I realise I may be oversensitive)
The current reality for our children and youth is that many now suffer from mental health crises, with little to no support available to provide relief. And we know that our most vulnerable children will have fewer opportunities to get help for their mental health challenges.
Children’s physical, emotional and cognitive health is of paramount importance to the future of South? Africa. This pandemic has placed even further layers of distress and trauma. Adults and communities which may have been able to provide some comfort or reassurance to vulnerable children before, are themselves now stressed further on multiple levels.
For more information about the conference or how to attend, please visit https://www.childtraumaconferenceafrica.org/
