Child sponsorship

Many organisations run child sponsorship programmes, some of which have been operating successfully for many years. The benefit for the sponsor is that they can see very practically how they are helping to make a difference in the life of the child or children they support. Very often the sponsored child will send letters and photographs, and friendships develop.

Although sponsorship programmes are focused on child welfare and poverty reduction, the underlying priority must always be to safeguard the children involved, particularly as the children can be a target for people wanting to abuse children.

In order to ensure harmful relationships aren't allowed to develop, the following safeguards should be put in place by the organisation and they must be prepared to decline sponsorship for any reason, including safeguarding concerns.

It is good practice for child sponsorship programmes to:

• Ensure organisations have a sound safeguarding policy as a basis for safeguarding the children involved in any child sponsorship programmes and have a formal procedure for all direct contact with the sponsored child
• Consult with external bodies, including the police, if there are serious doubts about an individual sponsor - for example, if they are in prison
• Any correspondence between the sponsor and the person sponsored should be sent via the organisation to ensure it does not contain the sponsor's contact details and to check for inappropriate written or visual material that might raise safeguarding concerns or contain political/religious comment that may cause offence or be illegal
• Ensure sponsors agree not to share any information about the person they have sponsored over the internet. Enabling sponsors to remain in contact after the sponsorship has ended should be facilitated by the organisation and only if the sponsored person and/or their parents/carers agree.