Our standards and commitments
We are committed to ensuring accountability to our stakeholders and to delivering quality programmes guided by agreed codes and standards. To this end, we have an Accountability Framework, consisting of eight commitments we strive to uphold and that guide all our international work.
Their purpose is to help us increase the quality, effectiveness and impact of our international work, and comply with the HAP Principles of Accountability. We are committed to taking account of the views, needs and capacities of our partners and the people in the poor communities we support so that the quality and effectiveness of our work is strengthened. Indeed, we strive to hold ourselves to account to all our stakeholders - including supporters and donors - in the delivery of these commitments.
Commitment 1 – Vision, Mission and Values (VMV)
We are committed to upholding our VMV through our staff, our relationships with partners and beneficiaries and through all our international programme work. Our core values are: compassion; solidarity; partnership; sustainability; stewardship; hope; and dignity. We are committed to standing alongside poor and disadvantaged communities in solidarity and to increasing awareness and understanding of underlying causes of poverty.
Our new strategic framework ‘Just One World’ was signed off by our Board in June 2010 and provides clarity, direction, structure and coherence for our work over the period 2010-2020. It also includes a refined Vision-Mission-Values (VMV) statement as well as setting out our ten-year aims with respect to our four-fold mission: power and influence; sustainable development; peace and security; and our Catholic Community in England and Wales.
On an annual basis, teams throughout CAFOD report against their three-year rolling plans which are closely aligned to Just One World.
By April 2012: We will have developed quantitative and qualitative reporting mechanisms that will allow us to track and monitor against our three-year rolling plans and identify the impact that our work has made. A summary of such impact will be included within the annual report from the Trustees.
Commitment 2 - Partners and the poor communities we work with
We are committed to working in partnership for our work in international development, humanitarian response, advocacy and education. We are committed to quality, transparency, participation, openness and equality in our relationship with partners, and to promote good partnership and accountability within the communities we serve.
As CAFOD has grown in size and complexity, this has been accompanied by a need to balance the commitment to improve standards of accountability and protection with a partnership approach, which respects the independence and autonomy of partners. We have identified a set of agreed “strategic partners” with whom we will work closely in priority areas, including developing plans for achieving minimum standards of accountability and safeguarding children.
By April 2012: CAFOD will be working with strategic partners and partners who have direct contact with children on supporting their plans to achieve minimum standards of accountability and safeguarding children within their country contexts. CAFOD's complaint handling is known to our partners and the communities they work with and all complaints are responded to within six weeks of the complaint being registered.
Commitment 3 – Quality programmes
Through long-term partnership with local organisations and communities, we support their work to build a better world for people living in extreme poverty. We maximise our impact on poverty by focusing on areas of work where we, and our partners, have particular expertise – such as creating an environment where people can make a living sustainably, combating HIV and AIDS, and environmental justice. In emergency situations, we provide immediate relief as well as supporting long-term recovery programmes to rebuild lives. Our international work is underpinned and guided by international codes and standards.
In September 2009, we were successfully certified against the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership International (HAP) accountability and quality management standard. This demonstrates our commitment to strengthening our accountability and supports us to continually improve our practices throughout our international development and humanitarian programme work.
In 2010 we commissioned a number of reviews in core areas of our international programme (livelihoods, HIV and AIDS, and disaster risk reduction), developed a new monitoring tool for capturing feedback from programme beneficiaries and clients in HIV-related care and mitigation work, and introduced mechanisms to collect gender disaggregated planning data for all of our projects.
By April 2012: We will have implemented recommendations from the livelihoods, disaster risk reduction and HIV and AIDS reviews and will have extended the use of beneficiary-feedback monitoring tools with our partners to support the quality of work in livelihoods and disaster-risk reduction sectors.
Commitment 4 - Stewardship, governance and finance
We are committed to being good stewards of all resources entrusted to us, openly accountable for our work, and professional in managing our resources.
In 2010, CAFOD completed the construction of Romero House, moving in May 2010 from its home for the last 25 years in Stockwell to a new headquarters, developed in partnership with the Archdiocese of Southwark at a site next to St George’s Cathedral. This development was completed on time and on budget, achieved an excellent rating for environmental performance and will provide the base for our global programme for the years to come.
During 2010, and looking ahead in the longer term, we aim to continue to build our supporter base in the Catholic Community in England and Wales, as well as considerably increase institutional funding to expand particular programmes and increase their impact.
By April 2012: We will have significantly increased the tools and opportunities available for building and maintaining links between supporter communities at home and the communities we work with in the South and also develop our competence across CAFOD in managing larger scale and complex funded programmes.
We will continue to reduce our carbon footprint in line with our 2007 Best Foot Forward Audit Report.
Commitment 5 - Safeguarding and protection
We are committed to recognising the personal dignity and rights of all people we work with, especially vulnerable groups. We have a particular concern to ensure children and young people are safeguarded and recognise we have a special duty of care and respect towards them. This commitment also extends to safeguarding the vulnerable adults we work with.
In support of our commitment to safeguarding and protection, we have identified a set of strategic partners and begun the process of engaging with these partners, together with those working on high safeguarding children risk projects, in order to plan for the implementation of child safeguards.
An e-learning tool for induction on safeguarding children has been produced to support awareness-raising on the protection risks and issues that exist for children and the responsibilities of CAFOD staff and volunteers to keep children safe from harm.
Appointment of a new Safeguarding Children Development Officer to replace the outgoing Safeguarding Coordinator will ensure continuity, an increased focus on safeguarding children in international programmes and enhanced collaboration with the CAFOD’s accountability function.
By April 2012: We will update our recruitment processes to take account of changes to the Independent Safeguarding Authority arrangements (registration as part of the Vetting and Barring Scheme) once these are announced.
We will continue to ensure that all of our strategic partners and partners working on high safeguarding children risk projects have in place plans to implement safeguarding children measures and are sufficiently clear and confident about their capabilities in meeting minimum standards for child safeguarding within a defined and agreed time period.
Commitment 6 - Supporters, communities and donors
We are committed to two-way communications with our supporters, and hearing their feedback – both positive and negative. We engage our supporters as partners in building mutually respectful development links with communities in the global south.
We welcome feedback and have established a feedback management policy and system for our stakeholders in the UK to ensure that we manage and respond to feedback effectively and promptly. We consider hearing positive and negative feedback an important element to our learning in order that we make on-going improvements to the way we work.
We have launched our ‘Connect2’ scheme that seeks to builds stronger links between our supporters and our international programmes by providing opportunities for parish communities and groups to enter into a relationship with one of our overseas partners to learn more about the impact of their support.
By April 2012: We will have developed the reporting functionality of our feedback management system to enable feedback to inform management decision making around planning, strategy development and allocation of resources.
We will continue to update and develop our “Connect2” scheme and enhance the links between our supporters and our international programmes.
Commitment 7 – Staff
We are committed to fair recruitment, upholding professional standards and providing management support to all staff. We are committed to recognising good practice and to supporting professional development and learning. We strive to do all that we reasonably can do to ensure our staff and volunteers are secure and protected as they go about their work.
In 2010 we reviewed the roles and job descriptions of all international staff with a view to regularising recruitment and terms of service across the whole organisation. We have introduced an online recruitment system which will facilitate line manager involvement in recruitment while continuing to ensure fairness. We have also revised our performance appraisal system and our competence profile with a view to making it easier to relate staff performance to the aims of the organisation – this will be rolled out in 2011.
By April 2011 we aim to maintain our certification under People in Aid Code of Good Practice as a way of continuing to demonstrate our commitment to high standards of people management, and in addition strengthening our internal mechanisms for handling complaints.
By April 2012: We are taking account of the findings of our 2010 staff survey relating to leadership, management standards and communication, and by April 2012 we will have in place a leadership development programme supported by modular management development provision available to staff in all locations, aimed at helping us deliver our 10-year strategy.
Commitment 8 – To learn from and share our experiences
We are committed to developing and integrating a strong learning dimension into all our ways of working, to bringing our learning and planning into a more dynamic relationship with each other and to using a variety of methodologies, to improve the quality of our work and its impact.
We introduced a new programme evaluation strategy in May 2010 in order to support a greater understanding of the impact of our work with partners and to communicate this internally and to others.
By April 2012: All external evaluations of our programme work will be shared through our website (while exercising due care for the safety of our staff and partners) in order to build and maintain confidence in our stewardship, value for money and impact. We welcome dialogue and feedback from others in order to enhance our programme quality and effectiveness.
If you would like further information about our commitment to accountability and HAP then please email accountability@cafod.org.uk
CAFOD’s Accountability work plan implementation report: Jan – Dec 2010 provides further details of objectives, achievements, challenges and lessons learned relating to CAFOD accountability work.
For every £1 given to our Give it up! appeal this Lent, including Lent Fast Day, the government will donate another £1 – doubling your donation and changing even more lives |
884 million people do not have access to clean, safe water. Pray with us this Lent that waters may flow and injustice may be washed away. |
Help us turn the tide on water poverty. Join our Thirst for change campaign and ensure world leaders hear our call: taps and toilets for all. |
