SOS Children’s Villages commissioned Keeping Children Safe, a recognized safeguarding organization, to conduct the Independent Child Safeguarding Review (ICSR) to help us learn from past safeguarding cases and make improvements. The report has now been made available to the public on our website. 

The ICSR was not an investigation into historical child abuse concerns but a review set up to better understand what contributed to the occurrence of child safeguarding incidents in selected complex cases, how the organization responded and what lessons can be learned for the larger organization.  

The aim was to continue to reduce risks in SOS Children’s Villages programmes today and improve current child safeguarding work for the future. 

• The Independent Child Safeguarding Review sets out a total of 46 specific recommendations that are grouped into five key areas, relating to: improvement of child safeguarding measures; leadership and organizational culture; oversight, governance, and accountability; care quality and the role of primary caregivers; and justice and support for victims, survivors and whistleblowers.  

• We commit ourselves to take immediate actions and implement all 46 recommendations in the ICSR report. 

• • We commit ourselves to take immediate actions and implement all 46 recommendations in the ICSR report. To make that happen, we have prepared a wide-ranging Safeguarding Action Plan. With this, we hold ourselves accountable for taking concrete actions with set deadlines.  

  • Our Safeguarding Action plan includes eight key actions:  

  1. Ensuring an independent commission examines cases of failings, including child abuse, corruption, and breaches of regulations 
  2. Establishing an ombudsperson system to represent the rights of children, young people and others affected by abuse 
  3. Funding individualized support for those who have experienced abuse 
  4. Providing extra support for our programmes in high-risk countries 
  5. Expanding our ‘Protective Behaviours’ empowerment programme for children and young people 
  6. Strengthening the incident management system 
  7. Updating and embedding our Code of Conduct into everything we do 
  8. Fully implementing the Prevention of Sexual Harassment, Exploitation and Abuse regulation. 

  9. • Our Child Safeguarding Annual Reports provide official statistics about incidents across the federation. For example, in the latest report (2019), there were 12 cases of staff as perpetrators of sexual coercion or abuse. In those cases, there were 15 children involved.  

     • There are a number of reasons why the ICSR report’s findings are presented in an anonymized fashion. It is of the utmost importance to protect the privacy and safety of victims and whistleblowers. In addition, we do not want to give the impression that all matters are resolved. We are prepared for more allegations to surface. We encourage people who have experienced or know of violations of our Code of Conduct in our programmes to come forward, if you have not done so already.  

     • Any one child harmed is one too many, and we will continue to do everything we can to prevent harm and respond quickly and appropriately to every single incident. 

     • Children are most vulnerable during an emergency. When disaster strikes, SOS Children’s Villages acts quickly to protect and care for children. With our long-term, global and local presence, we protect their rights and help keep families together. We stay for as long as it takes to help them overcome the emergency and rebuild their lives.

     • If you are a child or young person, this page is for you. You can find out what rights you have if you cannot live with your parents or if there are difficulties in your family.