Save the Children's Resource Centre

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

Impact of Multipupose Cash Assistance on Outcomes for Children in Lebanon: Improving cash-based interventions, multipurpose cash grants and protection

This report examines the impact of multi-purpose cash assistance on children, specifically looking at child outcomes and child protection outcomes, in Lebanon. The impact of the Lebanon Cash Consortium MCA program was measured using a variety of indicator

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children Author(s): Foster, Jillian | Chen, Jennifer C.
Digital Payments: Save time, save costs, save lives

This article reviews how mobile technologies can assist humanitarian organizations in overcoming an array of logistical challenges, to make crisis relief possible for children and families in vulnerable situations. In Yemen, Save the Children partnered wi

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Devex Author(s): Netzer, Sara
Child Sensitive Norms and Child Poverty: Maximising benefits, minimising harms

Child-sensitivity refers to that aspect of policies, programmes and interventions that aim to increase the benefits for children and reduce any harms, including gender discrimination. This involves assessing and monitoring both positive and negative impac

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children Author(s): Fernando, Suralini
Healthcare Through Child Sensitive Social Protection

Child Sensitive Social Protection works! This video from India presents a concrete example on how poverty, vulnerability and inequality are effectively reduced through strengthened social protection systems. The Community Health Protection Programme is a

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children Finland
Assessment of Save the Children's 'Child Sensitive Social Protection' Approach in South Asia

The Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) programme supported by Save the Children Finland in India, Bangladesh and Nepal aims to reduce vulnerability and poverty of children by ensuring that social protection measures lead to meaningful investment in

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children Finland Author(s): Smith, Gabrielle | Watson, Carol
Doing More, Doing Better: Social Protection for Adolescent Girls

This story shows the process of how to better include adolescent girls in the existing social protection framework in Bangladesh. Through evidence-based strategic advocacy, Save the Children has tried to better link with social protection systems and stru

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children Author(s): Sharmin, Afroza | Fernando, Suralini
The Palanhar Plus Approach: Strengthening a Cash Transfer Programme for Orphans and other Vulnerable Children in Dungarpur, Rajasthan

Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) is a Save the Children initiative aiming to reduce vulnerability and poverty of children by ensuring that social protection measures lead to meaningful investment in children. CSSP is a ‘social protection plus’ app

Publication year: 2014 Publisher(s): Save the Children Finland
Social Protection for Children: Key policy trends and statistics

Published as an instalment of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Social Protection Policy Papers, this publication examines the case of social protection policies as an essential element of realizing children’s rights, ensuring their well-being

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): ILO, International Labour Organization
More Investment in Social Protection, Briefing Paper

In June 2012, the Government of Bangladesh showed its commitment to providing social protection for its people by initiating the National Social Safety Strategy (NSSS). The NSSS proposes a life cycle approach to social protection, but does not yet clearly

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children
Cash Transfer Programmes in Sierra Leone

The humanitarian community is increasingly using cash-based and cash transfer programs (CTP) in response to emergencies world-wide. Many questions arise in regards to the use of this relief method. Primarily, (1) how do practitioners know that the resourc

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): FSNN, Food Security and Nutrition Network Author(s): Simbwa, Andrew
Using Mobile Money Payments for Cash Transfers: Save the Children and Econet

This is a webinar on Save the Children and Econet’s partnership in Zimbabwe. The aim of the programme was to distribute cash transfers electronically through mobile money services. The presentation covers each partner’s contribution, the benefits of digit

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children | Econet
Strengthening a cash transfer programme for orphans and other vulnerable children

How to combat poverty and vulnerability through Child Sensitive Social Protection? This video presents a concrete example from India. The Palanhar Plus is a Save the Children initiative in Rajasthan, that make a cash transfer programme for orphans and oth

Publication year: 2015 Publisher(s): Save the Children Finland