Social Protection Policies and Programmes

Poverty affects both the quality and length of children’s lives, reduces the ability of families to adequately provide for their children, and is a significant cause of family breakdown and child separation. Social assistance programmes aim to reduce child poverty and act as a safety net for families with minimal resources.

Such programmes include in-kind and in-cash transfers, and food for work initiatives. Social assistance programmes are a part of social welfare and must include clear child care policies that protect children and strengthen family and community capacities to access services and provide care.

Cash transfers are a means of financially supporting the most vulnerable households to improve the child’s access to essential goods and services, such as health and education. They include the use of child support grants, child and family allowances and targeted and conditional cash transfers. They may be combined with investment in child education and health services, and redistributive tax policies.

In-kind transfers provide access to essential goods and services instead of cash payments. Conditional cash transfers provide money to poor families on achieving certain actions, such as sending children to school.

Social assistance programmes may struggle to target those most in need, and provide sustainable support. Economic policies, including social assistance, and household economic strengthening, require substantial research, monitoring, and gatekeeping to ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable are reached and that long term benefits can be achieved for families, including child headed households.

The literature in this section provides country examples and analyses of social assistance programs, focusing primarily on cash transfer schemes.

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Making the Transition: How Asset Building Services Can Promote Positive Adult Outcomes for Foster Youth

Melanie L. Nadon - Children and Youth Services Review, 15 May 2020

This paper examines the frequency with which transition-age foster youth receive asset building services and whether the youth who receive services experience improved outcomes compared to those who do not.

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A future for the world’s children? A WHO-UNICEF-Lancet Commission

Helen Clark, Awa Marie Coll-Seck, et al - The Lancet Commissions, 18 Feb 2020

This WHO–UNICEF–Lancet Commission lays the foundations for a new global movement for child health that addresses the two crises of climate change and predatory commercial exploitation, and presents high-level recommendations that position children at the centre of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

A new kinship typology and factors associated with receiving financial assistance in kinship care

Yanfeng Xu, Charlotte Lyn Bright, Haksoon Ahn, Hui Huang, Terry Shaw - Children and Youth Services Review, 01 Feb 2020

This study used wave 2 of the U.S. National Survey of Child and Adolescent Well-Being II (NSCAW II) to develop a new typology of kinship care based on financial mechanisms, including: (1) families that received Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) only; (2) families that received foster care payments only; (3) families that received both TANF benefits and foster care payments; and (4) families that received no payments.

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The 1st Three: Thailand’s Progressive Road Toward Universal Child Grant Coverage

UNICEF, 01 Feb 2020

This brief from UNICEF describes the Child Support Grant (CSG), a non-contributory, non-conditional targeted cash transfer to caregivers of children between ages 0-6 in Thailand.

เส้นทางความก้าวหน้า สู่เงินอุดหนุนเพื่ อการเลี้ยงดู เด็กแรกเกิดแบบถ้วนหน้า ของประเทศไทย (The 1st Three: Thailand’s Progressive Road Toward Universal Child Grant Coverage)

UNICEF, 01 Feb 2020

This brief from UNICEF describes the Child Support Grant (CSG), a non-contributory, non-conditional targeted cash transfer to caregivers of children between ages 0-6 in Thailand.

Reducing the Number of Children Entering Foster Care: Effects of State Earned Income Tax Credits

Whitney L. Rostad, Katie A. Ports, Shichao Tang, Joanne Klevens - Child Maltreatment, 24 Jan 2020

This study used variations in the adoption and refund status of state-level Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), a socioeconomic policy intended to reduce poverty, to examine their effect on foster care entry rates in the U.S.

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Behavioral Change Promotion, Cash Transfers and Early Childhood Development : Experimental Evidence from a Government Program in a Low-Income Setting

Patrick Premand & Oumar Barry - The World Bank, 2020

This paper disentangles the effects of behavioral change promotion from cash transfers to poor households through an experiment embedded in a government program in Niger.

Executive Summary: A Foundation to End Child Poverty: How universal child benefits can build a fairer, more inclusive and resilient future

Save the Children, 2020

This report from Save the Children calls upon governments, donors and other development partners to urgently support an expansion in social protection coverage of children and their caregivers (predominantly women).

HOTĂRÎRE Nr. 132: pentru aprobarea Regulamentului cu privire la modul de stabilire și plată a indemnizațiilor pentru unele categorii de copii și tineri

Republic of Moldova, 2020

În temeiul art. 4 alin. (6) și art. 6 din Legea nr. 315/2016 privind prestațiile sociale pentru copii (Monitorul Oficial al Republicii Moldova, 2017, nr. 19-23, art. 56), cu modificările ulterioare, Guvernul HOTĂRĂŞTE:

1. Se aprobă:

Intervention Measures in Addressing the Needs of Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Marondera, Zimbabwe

Tendayi Garutsa & Mfundo Mandla Masuku - e-Bangi Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities, 2020

To investigate the challenges faced in addressing the needs of orphans and vulnerable children in Marondera, focus group discussions and interviews were utilised. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data in this study and the data was presented in themes.