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).

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.

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.

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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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), working progressively towards UCBs.

Partnering for Family Success: Final Evaluation Report

Crampton, D., Fischer, R., Richter, F., Collins, C. C., Bai, R., & Henderson, M. - Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development, 2020

This report presents the results of an evaluation of the Partnering for Family Success (PFS) program, which was conceived as an innovative intervention to address the particular needs of housing unstable families who had a child in the custody of the county child welfare agency.

UNHCR MENA Protection Service: Enhancing child protection services by incorporating Cash-based Interventions as part of comprehensive programming

UNHCR, 2020

This report presents the results of multi-country research launched in 2018 on refugee data in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon to study the impact of cash-based interventions (CBI) on child protection outcomes.

A Pandemia do COVID-19 e a Protecção Social em Moçambique

Plataforma da Sociedade Civil Moçambicana para Protecção Social (PSCM-PS), 2020

Medidas preventivas e de mitigação do impacto do COVID-19 nos grupos vulneráveis e de alto risco entre os beneficiários do PSSB.