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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Social Protection & Child Protection: Working together to protect children from the impact of COVID-19 and beyond

The Alliance for Children Protection in Humanitarian Action, UNICEF, Save the Children, 2020

This paper presents evidence of how social protection approaches can contribute to child protection outcomes and outlines recommendations which call for strong mobilization and uptake by governments, UN and multilateral development agencies, regional bodies, donors, and Civil Society Organizations (CSOs).

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.

Perceptions of Parents/Guardians About the Effectiveness of Future Families Orphans and Vulnerable Children Programme in Olievenhoutbosch, South Africa

Eale E. Kris & Mphuthi David - Global Journal of Health Science, 14 Dec 2019

The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the perceptions of orphans and vulnerable children’s parents/guardians about the effectiveness of Future Families’ children programme in Olievenhoutbosch as a way to explore how much they are involved in the process of designing the programme activities and if they perceive the programme as effective in responding to their family needs.

Determinants of implementing cash transfer program for orphans and vulnerable children: A case of Isiolo County, Kenya

Thomas Mugo Njeru and David Minja - International Academic Journal of Law and Society, 07 Dec 2019

The purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which government allocated financial resources, management procedures and stakeholders are major determinants of implementation of cash transfer program for orphans and vulnerable children in Isiolo County, Kenya.

Housing instability and child welfare: Examining the delivery of innovative services in the context of a randomized controlled trial

Cyleste C. Collins, Rong Bai, Robert Fischer, David Crampton, Nina Lalich, Chun Liu, Tsui Chan - Children and Youth Services Review, 20 Nov 2019

This study employed a mixed-methods approach to examine process findings from a randomized control trial from the first county-level Pay for Success initiative, Partnering for Family Success.

End of Programme Evaluation - Government of the Republic of Zambia-United Nations Joint Programme on Social Protection

Ignace Gashongore - UNICEF, 01 Nov 2019

This report details the end of programme evaluation Government of the Republic of Zambia-United Nations Joint Programme on Social Protection as a way of understanding and assessing its operational context and the effect the technical assistance had on the implementation of National Social Protection Policy (NSPP) during the programme’s lifetime.

LEGACY Program Randomized Controlled Trial Endline Report

Elisa M. Maffioli, Erica Field, Nicholus Tint Zaw, Federica Esu, Alexander Fertig - Innovations for Poverty Action & Save the Children, 01 Nov 2019

This experimental evaluation of the LEGACY program - a program implemented in three townships across Myanmar’s central dry zone that provided monthly cash transfer to mothers in their last two trimesters of pregnancy until the child turns two years old, as well as a monthly Social and Behavioral Change Communication (SBCC) activity supplementing the cash transfers, covering a range of topics related to nutrition and child health - measures the program's impact on child nutrition.