RAPCAN’s vision is of a safe environment for all children, free from all forms of abuse, neglect and violence, where children are loved, respected and treasured and where children’s rights are upheld and protected.

 

Our mission is the development of innovative child abuse prevention strategies which combat the patterns of abuse which affect the lives of children and adults everywhere.

RAPCAN is an acronym for Resources Aimed at the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect.  Since the organisation was started in 1989 by the University of Cape Town’s Department of Peadiatrics and Child Health, it has focused its attention primarily on child abuse prevention.  This focus was (and still is) made tangible by means of training and awareness workshops, and the production and dissemination of resources.   In the last few years, with a changed political situation in South Africa, this focus has expanded and incorporated legislative advocacy.  Even more recently, RAPCAN has moved into providing support for children entering the criminal justice system.

 

Our approach at RAPCAN is two-pronged.  We focus on building capacity within the child protection system and at community level to respond appropriately to our extraordinarily high levels of child abuse and neglect.  And we focus on long-term prevention of child abuse and neglect.  The complexity of the causal factors relating to child abuse and neglect and violence against children demand an equally complex set of responses.  We are convinced of the need to address these issues on a number of levels and via different strategies.  Our programme work is focused on four different but inter-related groups of activities.  Our core business is training and materials development for training around both prevention and rehabilitation.  We maintain a Resource Centre, open to the public, which contains an extensive collection of relevant material in a variety of media.  We undertake a significant amount of legislative advocacy, and we work with and within the criminal justice system to improve certain aspects of the child protection system.

RAPCAN was registered as a Section 21 Company (i.e. a not-for-gain company in terms of the South African Companies Act) in 1997., and registered as a non-profit organisation (NPO number 010-744).  The Board of Directors consists of 9 members, and there are 12 staff members.  The office is in Observatory, in Cape Town in the Western Cape, although RAPCAN works nationally and indeed throughout the SADC region.

 

The fact that RAPCAN was started in response to the need for education and training in the field of child abuse and neglect, and was set up initially as a research programme has shaped the unique services it now offers.  Whilst most of the organisations with whom we work, such as Safeline, Childline and NICRO, are involved in counseling children, we emphasize child abuse prevention strategies.  RAPCAN is committed to working actively within a non-racist, non-sexist, developmental and rights-based framework.