Portal on child protection launched

PS ministry of labour Susan Mochahe during the launch of the child protection information management system (CPIMS) at KICC on May 9, 2017. PHOTO | LILIAN MUTAVI | NATION MEDIA GROUP

The Kenyan government has launched a website that will manage, track and report on child protection activities in the country.

Through the launch of the child protection information management system (CPIMS), the national government will be able to collect and manage data on cases related to children and the services offered from both the State and non-state actors.

The programme which is meant to replace the manual covering data entry into a web based system has currently information on 20,000 children from 11 counties and it will be availed to other agencies that are mandated to offer services to children.

Speaking during the launch on Tuesday, Principal Secretary ministry of East Africa, Labour and Social Protection, Susan Mochahe said that the system will also transform how the government allocates resources to the protection of children through evidence-based resource allocation.

Ms Mochahe said that the government will roll out CPIMS in the remaining counties and has allocated Sh1.1 million for two more counties — Baringo and Kisii — in the current financial year with the hope of rolling it out in the remaining counties by the FY2017-18.

LEFT OUT

“Despite all the progress made, Kenya is plagued by plethora of challenges that have been caused by fragmentation and ineffective coordination mechanism resulting in slow consolidation of the gains we’ve made regarding children. A case point is the fact that we still have children in the streets, undergoing FGM and sexual abuse among other issues,” said Ms Mochahe.

Ms Mochahe said that children have been left out in important key decisions both at the national and international levels citing that every year the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics publishes its Economic Survey report, presenting the country’s socio-economic highlights for the last five years.

It also provides important information for planning and budgeting, monitoring, and policy formulation processes in the country.

However, for the last three years, data on child protection has been omitted from the report due to lack of reliable data.

She said that CPIMS will go a long way in reporting obligation to the Kenya Bureau of Statistics, Africa Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child and the United Convention on the Right of the child.

ACCURATE REPORTS

“The System adequately meets the data requirement of the government while maintaining ease of use adoption and scaling…it is a hybrid system that does both case management and aggregates child protection data both at the national, county and sub-county levels,” said Ms Mochahe.

She added that the system has been designed to guarantee that the data is comprehensive, verifiable and accurate with a nationwide statistical representation on child protection related issues.

Speaking at the same forum, Director Children Services Noah Sanganyi said that the system will enable government in reporting accurately on issues of children.

He said that it will be able to account for any child anywhere in the country by having real data from all sub-counties.

It will also help to justify the resources allocated to the children department by the national government and other resources.

It will have data on vulnerable children, orphaned children, neglected children and abandoned, child labour, adopted children among all cases that affect children from the counties and sub-county.