Kenya’s largest private child welfare organisation, SOS Children’s Villages has donated 23 laptops to Department of Children’s services; Child Protection Information management System (CPIMS) section to support in management of children information. CPIMS was launched in 2017 with an objective of availing timely and quality child protection data that can be used for decision making, monitoring, programing and policy formulation. Since its launch the department has rolled out the same to all the 47 counties and has partnered with different stakeholder to conduct end user capacity building.

SOS children’s Village has had a long standing partnership with the department and has actively been engaged in building capacity of 240 officers and stakeholders from seven counties;Meru, Busia, Uasin Gichu, Kisumu, Homabay, Mombasa and Nairobi) The officers trained currently use the system to upload children data from the grassroots.

Since its launch, CPMIS has simplified analysis of data, there are effort to incorporate more modules. Currently, there is inadequate data on the reasons why children are placed in the various alternative care settings in Kenya. Similarly, there is also insufficient data to monitor children leaving formal care placements across the country. In addition, data on the number of children who are unaccompanied or separated in emergency situations does not exist at either a national or sub-national level.

According to Care System assessment report (2018), data related to the care and protection of children in Kenya is reported into the Child Protection Information Management System (CPIMS). Thisdata is sourced from both the government statutory institutions, Charitable Children’s Institutions and other stakeholder in the sector.

The secretary Department of Children’s Services; Mr Shem Nyakutu while receiving donations appreciated SOS Children’s Villages stating that this donations will go a long way in enhancing data entry in the field stations as well as monitoring and analysis of CPIMS data by field officers at the department headquarter. He also took note of 3 desktops and printers donated to Uasin Gishu county and the process that the department of social protection and SOS CV is undertaking to deepen the partnership by formalising the cooperation through an MOU.

While handing over the donations, the National Director; SOS Children’s Villages, Walter Odhiambo stated that the welfare of all Kenyan children need to be prioritised by allocating resources and instituting child friendly policies and legislations at all level.