Putting Child Sensitive Social Protection into Practice in Bangladesh

Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) is a Save the Children initiative in South Asia aiming to reduce vulnerability and poverty of children by ensuring that social protection measures lead to meaningful investment in children. Currently the programme is being implemented in Bangladesh, India and Nepal.

In 2007, Save the Children initiated a series of short studies aimed at understanding the social and economic patterns around child labour in the project area. It clearly emerged that children who work often belong to households that are chronically poor, or slide into poverty due to shock or stress stemming from events such as illness, accident and marital breakdown. In addition, such households are often quick to resort to child labour and do not consider alternative ways of ensuring children’s long-term educational needs and rights at a time of household stress.

To address this trend, it was realised that a combination of social and economic interventions were needed. Hence, in 2011 Save the Children designed a project on CSSP in 22 Union Parishads of Mymensigh and Netrokona districts with child labour reduction as the prime focus. The overall strategy of the project is to address the dismal situation with respect to child labour in the area by improving access for poor households and their children to government social protection programmes while, simultaneously, inducing parents to make social and economic investments in their children.