You are here
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
-
Gender and Disability in Save the Children's Humanitarian Child Poverty Work
Girls and boys, men and women, and persons with disabilities, are all effected differently during disasters, with a tendency to adopt different coping mechanisms and follow different paths. This child sensitive tip sheets shows how Save the Children shoul
-
Child-sensitive Social Protection Briefing Paper
Child-sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) is an approach to social protection to realize the rights of children. CSSP helps families cope with chronic poverty, stresses, and shocks, and enables them to invest on an adequate and continuing basis in their ch
-
Child Sensitive Indicators for Poverty Alleviation Programming
Poverty alleviation is a crucial component to achieving Save the Children's global strategy of child survival, learning, and protection from violence. While many studies suggest that economic strengthening programmes can lead to many benefits to children
-
Child Poverty Humanitarian Strategic Framework
Since its inception in 2014, the Child Poverty Global Theme has been developing a strategic plan which aims at strengthening the economic dimension of Save the Children's programming across our breakthroughs of survival, learning, and protection. The appl
-
"Cash Plus" Programmes for Children
This paper provides a resource on "Cash Plus" interventions for children. These interventions combine household cash transfers with complementary, context-relevant interventionsn in order to address the multiple drivers of childhood deprivations and gener
-
Adaptation and Response for Children Affected by Droughts and Disasters
Weather-related stresses associated with El Niño in 2015–2016 have severely impacted 60 million people. Governments across the globe are dealing with the consequences as they affect food security, livelihoods, and the well-being of their populations. Seve
-
Child Poverty Strategic Plan 2016-2018
This publication lays out Save the Children’s Child Poverty Strategic Plan. The Plan will work between 2016 and 2018 to build a cohesive approach for Save the Children to help children escape from poverty. It will enhance the economic dimension of Save th
-
Disinherited: Childhood inequality, equal opportunities and public policy
"Disinherited" begins by describing the current inequality affecting children living in Spain and its relation to the possibility of social mobility according to the income and social and cultural capital that children inherit from their parents. The repo
-
Electronic Transfers in Humanitarian Assistance and Uptake of Financial Services: A synthesis of ELAN case studies
Cash transfers are playing an increasingly large role in humanitarian responses. Mobile money, using a mobile device to access financial services, is growing across the globe and humanitarian agencies are taking advantage of this trend to deliver cash tra
-
Mobile Money in Liberia: Save the Children's lessons learned
Learn how Save the Children used mobile money for emergency assistance to 5,000 households affected by Ebola in Liberia. Speakers share insights including the importance of the banking sector to mobile money humanitarian programs, consider the role of sup
-
How can the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme become more sensitive to children’s rights?: Experiences and recommendations from Dungarpur district, Rajasthan
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) is one of the largest public works programmes in human history. The overarching aim of MGNREGA is to enhance the livelihood security of the rural poor by providing at least 100 days of g
-
Digital Cash Transfers in Liberia: A case study from Save the Children's Emergency Food Security Programme (2015-2016)
Unconditional cash transfer programmes are growing in popularity as a means of providing emergency aid, and with that, the humanitarian community is also looking to digitalize cash transfer mechanisms. This comes with many advantages: the process becomes