SEXUAL ABUSE AND EXPLOITATION OF BOYS IN SOUTH ASIA A ...

The Youth Club in Narayangadh provides a night shelter for disadvantaged children,
intercedes in child abuse cases and provides referral to services for abused children and their
parents. A network of NGOs based in Kathmandu, the Children at Risk Networking Group,
operates two shelters for abused and abandoned children. Bal Bikas Samaj (Children’s Rights
Group), a child rights organization in the city of Biratnagar, intercedes in child abuse cases
and provides legal support and counselling to abused children. The Forum for Human Rights
and Environment is a human rights organization that provides counselling and legal aid for
male and female victims of sexual abuse, both adults and children, as well as training in
reproductive health and awareness programmes on sexual abuse for children and adults.
6.4.8.3 Psychosocial care
Direct psychological interventions with children to address the effects of sexual abuse and
exploitation are limited due to the lack of professionally trained counsellors and conceptual
confusion over the term ‘counselling’. Most NGOs working with abused children, children
living on the street or children affected by conflict profess to conduct ‘counselling’ and
engage ‘counsellors’, and the need for counselling of children is repeated in the country’s
policies. However, in Nepal counselling is not identified as a specific, professionally qualified
practice, and the term is applied to any activity in which a person interacts with a child to
discuss problems. There is limited understanding among NGOs and government and donor
agencies on the development and operation of comprehensive psychosocial support
systems. 302
For many years, and due largely to the promotion of counselling by the government and the
donor community, short-term orientations in basic psychological issues have been considered
adequate training for counsellors. Some schools provide longer-term training, but the
instruction is almost entirely theoretical, lacking supervised clinical practice. One
organization, Transcultural Pyschosocial Organization Nepal (TPO) provides professional
counselling training with a high level of clinical supervision of trainees. UNICEF, ILO and
other organizations have supported TPO to develop training manuals, strengthen its
programme and build human capacity for local organizations. Currently a number of
organizations, including CWIN, Maiti Nepal and ABC Nepal, employ counsellors trained by
TPO to address the needs of abused and exploited children.
302 Save the Children Sweden-Denmark (Slugget, C.), 2003, ‘Mapping of psychosocial support for girls and boys
affected by child sexual abuse in four countries in South and Central Asia’.
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