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Child-sensitive social protection
Children from poor households are more likely to receive poor healthcare, suffer inadequate nutrition, achieve lower educational results and consequently lower future earnings in the labour market. They are likely to grow up into poorer adults whose children do less well thus continuing the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Child-Sensitive Social Protection secures basic incomes and reduces risks for children in extreme poverty and/or without family care, and takes into account the voices and views of children and their caregivers.
Social protection policies and programmes are an essential element of realising child rights and breaking the intergenerational, vicious cycle of poverty. Policies designed and implemented with children in mind can significantly increase benefits for children including: educational attainment, health care access, adequate nutrition and reduction in risk of abuse, exploitation and neglect. Child-Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) comprises policies, programmes and systems that address the specific patterns of children’s poverty and vulnerability and recognize the long-term developmental benefits of investing in children as well as the obligation to fulfill their rights.
CSSP encompasses child-focused or family-based programmes that directly or indirectly address children’s needs and rights and improve child development. Save the Children is working to ensure that all social protection programmes are child-sensitive, by maximising impacts and minimising harms for both girls and boys of all ages.
CSSP often means providing cash transfers, in-kind transfers or a combination, often in humanitarian crisis situations. It could also be providing access, among very poor families with children, to social insurance such as unemployment benefits, health insurance, pensions and maternity care. The aim is to reach the most vulnerable and deprived ─ orphans, very poor families with young children, mothers with newborns, children in institutional and family-based care and poor students in need of support to continue schooling (often girls).
In 2018 the Child Poverty Global theme launched the organisation wide common approach ‘Resourcing Families for Better Nutrition. Driven by the CSSP subtheme, our ‘Cash-Plus’ global common approach works to provide cash transfers and information to families to ensure pregnant women and babies receive the right kind of food, preventing long-term damage from undernutrition in the critical first 1000 days of a child’s life.
In CSSP, Save the Children is working together with a number of partners, particularly UNICEF and other members of the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty.
Photo: Prasanth Vishwanathan/Save the Children
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The Effectiveness of Cash Transfer Programming for Children
Cash Transfer Programming (CTP) is a means of giving people money to meet critical needs, invest in their livelihood and in their children’s future. Substantial evidence has been generated on the effectiveness of cash transfers- including their impacts on
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Save the Children Global Child Sensitive Social Protection Approach Paper
This document presents Save the Children's vision in the area of social protection and draws together a wide range of examples of our work from accumulated experience in the last decade and a half, categorised into five main types of work. This paper is c
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A Parenting Programme for the Child Grant: Facilitator Guide
The Child Grant is a government of Nepal cash transfer programme for children under 5 years aiming to reduce underweight. Save the Children has developed a parenting programme for the families receiving this grant focusing on improving nutritional outco
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Scoping and Sector Review of Social Protection in Somaliland
This Scoping Study and Sector Review, produced under the guidance of the Ministry of Employment, Social Affairs and Family (MESAF) of Somaliland and Save the Children, is a strategic analysis of the existing policy landscape in Somaliland in order to info
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Universal Child Benefits (UCBs): A foundation to end child poverty
Although children represent a third of the world’s population, they make up half of the world’s extreme poor (surviving on less than $1.90 per day). Just 35% of children globally receive any form of government child or family benefit, falling to as low as
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A Parenting Programme for the Palanhar Yojana- Beyond Cash: Making social protection deliver more for children in Rajasthan, India- Facilitator guide
The Palanhar Yojana (caregiver scheme) is a government of Rajasthan (India) cash transfer programme aiming to reducing the vulnerability of children with limited parental care. Save the Children has developed a parenting programme for the families rece
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Child Sensitive Social Protection in south Rajasthan, India, Project Brief 2020
Dungarpur is a small poverty-struck tribal district in south Rajasthan, India, where malnutrition, child labour, school dropout, and lack of appropriate care are some of the challenges that children face early in life which negatively affect their long-te
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Access to Social Protection in Syhlet, Bangladesh
This study was undertaken to examine the coverage of social protection schemes in Sylhet, Bangladesh, and to analyse what barriers poor and vulnerable people face in accessing such schemes. The target area was chosen based on it being the operational area
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Briefing note: Securing Access to Government Social Protection Programmes in Dungarpur, India
This brief gives a general description of the approaches developed by Save the Children to promote access to government social protection in India.
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Analysis of Child-Sensitive Social Protection in Malawi
Millions of children in Malawi are highly vulnerable and deprived. About 60 percent of the country’s children are multi-dimensionally poor. Rates of children who are multi-dimensionally poor are higher in rural areas (70 percent) than in urban areas (25 p
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Mid-term Meta-Review of Save the Children Finland’s Child-Sensitive Social Protection Programme
Save the Children Finland’s Global Programme 2017-2021 places special emphasis on the themes of child poverty, in particular Child-Sensitive Social Protection, and Child Protection. In 2019, an internal Mid-Term Review was carried out of seven projects in
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Using Household Economy Analysis to Strengthen the Shock-responsiveness of the Social Cash Transfer Programme in Malawi
This one-pager summarises a project being implemented in Malawi with funding from Irish Aid, to help strengthen the shock-responsiveness of a social protection programme called the Social Cash Transfer Programme, using a tool called Household Economy Anal