Introduction
Impact matters to Childlight and sits at the heart of everything we do. Our overarching purpose is to safeguard children across the world from sexual exploitation and abuse, with our vision to have CSEA treated as a global health issue that can be prevented and treated.
To achieve this, our mission is to:
- Make available data that drives sustainable, coordinated action to safeguard children across the world
- Improve CSEA data quality, integrity and reproducibility
- Be recognised as the leading independent authority for global CSEA data
Childlight knows our strength is in our data and our research – and creating the bridge for how that data can be interpreted and used to improve child safety. We concentrate on catalysing long lasting sustainable change by reducing data gaps and improving information systems so that CSEA is treated as a public health issue. For this to happen, Childlight’s data and research has to have a clear purpose, be useful and be used.
Our definition of impact
The way in which we translate our research outputs into tangible impact for children and young people is called our “Pathway to Impact”. A common framework and ways of working will ensure that we are all – whether we are Childlight or a partner – considering Impact in the same ways and using the same tools available to us. The following principles describe how we think about this Pathway to Impact, and influence how we approach and empower our people.
Integrated – embedded into our research workflow to connect research into practice and tangible change
Proportionate – the expected impact and benefit of our work must outweigh the risk or effort required
Holistic – biased towards prevention of CSEA, whilst recognising that there may also be negative impact and unintended consequences as a result of our work
Practical – grounded in what is feasible and achievable, including how Childlight can support others for the benefit of children
Our pathways to impact
It is important for Childlight to be able to track each of our activities back to our vision and mission so that everything we do is purposeful. We have split out our three mission statements into specific goals against which we hold ourselves accountable. Each mission has a set of key activities and points to a tangible, desired impact, so that Childlight can describe how what we are directly creating or catalysing positive change in the world for children.
Mission 1: To make available data that drives sustainable, coordinated action to safeguard children across the world
Goals:
- Expose the scale of abuse globally, specifically in hidden and vulnerable populations
- Identify emerging risk factors so they can be prevented and mitigated early
- Hold individuals, organisations, and sectors to account for their role in prevention
- Track how abuse is changing over time
- Catalyse Law Enforcement Authority CSEA data into action and capture back into research
Key Activities:
- Undertake systematic data collection, aggregation and integration, across data sources, to define the problem of CSEA
- Produce disaggregated estimates on the prevalence, scale and nature of CSEA globally [Into the Light global index]
- Explore and produce estimates on various types of CSEA [Into the Light global index]
- Link prevalence data to risk and protective factors [Searchlight report]
- Identify gaps in data and insight, including in hidden populations
Desired Impact:
- Availability of high quality, regular CSEA prevalence figures at national, regional, and global levels
- CSEA prevention stakeholders have ready access to reliable and up-to-date information on violence
- Countries’ ability to measure, respond to and prevent CSEA is monitored over time
- Children are better safeguarded from sexual abuse and exploitation
Mission 2: Improve CSEA data quality, integrity and reproducibility
Goals:
- Champion collaboration and interoperability between organisations and sectors
- Drive common data frameworks and terminologies
- Develop best practice standards for accessing, analysing and using CSEA data
- Work with others to improve and enhance our work, sharing our learning with others
- Build a diverse and multi-disciplinary community of CSEA data practitioners
Key Activities:
- Develop, adopt and promote CSEA standards
- Share Childlight’s own approaches for transparency and reproducibility
- Improve CSEA data collection and measurement methods
- Identify gaps and “hotspots” in data to further explore data availability, integrity and quality
- Enable professionalisation of those working with CSEA data
Desired Impact:
- Countries possess the minimum capabilities for handling CSEA data
- Countries have an enhanced ability to manage and act upon CSEA data
- CSEA data, research and insight is globally comparable and compatible
- Activities of international CSEA prevention actors are harmonised and strengthened
- CSEA prevention is incorporated into multisectoral plans
Mission 3: To be recognised as the leading independent authority for global CSEA data
Goals:
- Focus on the end impact and what will change for children as a result
- Maintain trust, transparency and credibility in Childlight data and insight
- Target resources to where they are needed most
- Proactively take data and insight to those who need it
- Champion change in the best interests of children and survivors
Key Activities:
- Produce accessible and lay-friendly content
- Disseminate Childlight findings – both research and practice-based
- Target outreach to government policy makers, framers and legislators to identify evidence-based actions to prevent and respond to CSEA
- Support collective and proactive prioritisation of global capabilities
- Establish a sustainable lived experience workstream
- Develop, disseminate and support best practice guidance for CSEA data collection and analysis
Desired Impact:
- Increased awareness of CSEA, its impacts, and its preventability
- Governments and other CSEA prevention stakeholders are empowered to implement data driven, evidence-based approaches that prevent and respond to CSEA
- Governments’ abilities to target resources to implement INSPIRE are improved
Our process and controls
Over the last year we have been establishing the capabilities and controls required to direct and manage our Pathways to Impact.
These include:
- A dedicated pathways to impact manager who focuses on connecting research ad practice, identifying new opportunities for impact, monitoring and reporting on our progress
- Training pathways for the Childlight team, including understanding and articulating impact
- Pathway to Impact processes embedded throughout the research workflow – including initial pathway to impact planning to start research from a place of impact, checkpoints as research progresses, connection with advisory groups to define tangible recommendations and final pathway to impact plans to ensure that research and data get to those who can use it
- Tracking and monitoring processes to evidence our impact across different forms, hold ourselves to account and be held to account by others
- Measuring our impact through an annual balanced scorecard with KPIs linked to our vision and mission, with quarterly and annual targets
- Reporting across stakeholders, including to the Childlight Steering Board, to funders, to partners and to the public
Our impact goes beyond research
We know that “impact” can come in many forms, span many people and places, and take months or years to grow. Impact comes not just from producing research and publications, but from getting that research and data being used to change policy, legislation, funding and capabilities.
What’s next?
In the last year we have focused on establishing Childlight and producing the first versions of the Into the Light global index and Searchlight. We are now focusing on consolidating our research into practice, through, for example, developing country-level prevalence estimates and working with countries to catalyse this data into increased resources and improved legislation.
This is our first transparency report and as such sets out what we do, how we do it, and why. As Childlight evolves over the coming year, we will continue to monitor and evidence our impact, showing not just the volume of outputs and products we create, but how these are being used for change. Our annual report will highlight what we have achieved over the previous year across our pillars of activity, and how this has been of benefit to children globally and those who keep them safe.