What do we do?
Our aim is to reduce the levels of child sexual abuse, to provide support to those who have been abused and their families and to promote the prevention of abuse through education.
To achieve this, Nonceba developed a number of programmes for Victim Support and Prevention of Abuse:
This programme provides assistance, intervention and counselling for children under the age of 14 who have been sexually or physically abused including a residential safe house for abused or “at risk” children for whom it is not possible to remain at home.
This ensures that abused children receive the appropriate medical, psychological and legal assistance they need, for both the initial crisis stage and long-term healing.
This is managed by:
- Identifying child victims of sexual abuse via direct reporting at the Centre, education abuse prevention programmes in the community and referrals from other agencies
- Provision of counselling to victims and their families
- Interventions to ensure child’s safety and prevent repeat of abuse. This includes the provision of safe house accommodation for “at risk” children
- Court support to assist prosecution of perpetrators.
The purpose of this is to enable children to recover from the trauma of sexual abuse and prevent re-abuse by prosecuting or removing perpetrators. This results in:
- Healing of the child from the trauma of abuse
- Improved ability of the abused child to cope with school and social situations
- Functioning families are re-built through counselling
- Child has strategies and support to help him/her prevent recurrence of the abuse.
- Healing of victims through support from other victims
- Effective court preparation leading to successful prosecution of offenders
- Prevention of repeat abuse by counselling of offenders.
Fifteen years ago, the children who came to the centre were being abused in the main by adult caregivers, adult men who had been left in charge of the children whilst their partners were out at work. This has changed now to a situation where, in addition to abusive men, the perpetrators are often teenagers and gangs.
Nonceba programmes have had to adapt to combat the new reality.
The Abuse Prevention Education Programme
This programme is intended to make children safer by making them – and the community – aware of how abuse can happen; how to prevent it and how to deal with it when it happens. Courses are run on parenting skills, health education, nutrition and first aid. This work is done in our own training facility, in schools, public halls, churches and via local radio and, with increasing awareness and support in the community, is meeting with growing success.
Expanded Services
In order to remain relevant to the constantly changing needs of the community, Nonceba has evolved from the original focus on providing counselling to sexually abused children, and has now expanded the breadth of services offered including: residential safe house care and after-school programmes for abused and “at risk” children, counselling for abused women and children, life skills for abused women, court support to victims of sexual abuse and community outreach programmes to counter the abuse
Professional staff provide therapeutic counselling services for women who have survived incidents of crime and trauma including rape, domestic violence and human trafficking. In addition, we providing support with accessing medical, psychological and legal advice. Survivors and their families are prepared and supported for the potentially traumatic court process as the perpetrators are brought to book.
