Introduction
This report presents the research by an international team of experts, which they concluded within a framework of ENCON project – Enhancing CSOs Contribution to Evidence-Based Policy Making for Vulnerable Groups in Belarus. The project has been implemented by CASE Belarus in cooperation with CASE (Poland), Institute of Economic Research of Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia), The Faculty of Economics and Administration of Masaryk University (Czech Republic), as well as ACT (Belarus).
Main goal of the first (technical) part of this paper is to provide simple overview of available information related to application of social cost-benefit analysis to determine the methodological approach selected for the assessment of applied social policies (in terms of pilot programs) in Belarus covered by the ENCON project. Application of in-depth social cost-benefit analysis is a difficult task. In this part of paper, we describe general methodological overview based on available sources.
We also present potential adjustments or alternatives to CBA methodology with aim to simplify calculations or to use more tailored methods of assessment of social policies (focused on improvement of the status of various vulnerable social groups). In the second part of the paper, we describe the challenges of application of CBA on interventions for children and families at risk and present selected cases of assessment of public programmes aimed to infl uence policies related to children and families at risk. Third part of the report presents cost-and-benefi t analyses of a losing parental care prevention program that is currently being implemented in Belarusian provinces by SOS-Children Villages.
