Supporting children in need
Delivering the best for every child, everywhere
The challenge
Social protection is critical to helping prevent and reduce poverty, vulnerability, exclusion and inequality for those who need it most. A significant number of children in the Eastern Caribbean are living in poverty; the subregional average is around 33 per cent. For at least one country, this rises to more than half the child population. Multidimensional poverty (in which children experience a range of depravations beyond low income, such as exclusion and social ill treatment) provides a more comprehensive lens through which to analyse and respond to such needs.
Social protection throughout the region is often not prioritized, coverage is still below average, and the sector is largely underfunded. In addition, systems need to be more shock-responsive in a region where emergencies - whether humanitarian, environmental or economic - can have cataclysmic repercussions. With a variety of crises, including climate change, the most vulnerable continue to bear the highest burden.
There is also a significant data deficit which makes it hard for governments to design and implement evidence-based programmes.
The solution
Social protection can and should be a tool to support lives, livelihoods and well-being and systems include a range of services to mitigate poverty and social deprivation and empower and protect women, children and people with disabilities, as well as indigenous communities.
UNICEF is working with partners to make social protection more effective, comprehensive, inclusive and shock-responsive, while building resilience. We are collaborating with countries to develop or strengthen social protection policies, action plans and social sector budgets for greater investment in children.
When effectively designed, social protection systems are integrated by nature and bring together basic inter-sectoral services, e.g., water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), education, child protection (including psychosocial support) and social and behaviour change.
Cash transfer programmes have been shown to reduce poverty and improve well-being across a range of areas including food security, health, schooling, child protection, productive activities, and safe transitions to adulthood. Households may face budget constraints that limit their ability to buy food, send children to school and seek healthcare. Regular cash payments can help alleviate these financial constraints. ‘Cash-plus’ interventions combine cash transfers with one or more types of complementary support.
To tackle the data deficit, we are supporting data-collection processes (including multidimensional poverty analyses) to inform the design and implementation of evidence-based child poverty reduction strategies. We are also developing standardized management information systems to digitize social assistance data, based on the Humanitarian cash Operations and Programme Ecosystem (Hope) which supports cash assistance in emergencies.
We are committed to capacity building in a variety of areas such as collaborating with key government stakeholders and ministries to strengthen expertise in Public Finance for Children (PF4C) and training and technical assistance to reinforce the importance of shock-responsive social protection and increased coordination between disaster risk management and the social protection sector.
Accountability is critical and UNICEF is promoting grievance redress mechanisms to ensure this.
HUMANITARIAN ACTION
UNICEF has significant and growing experience in providing unrestricted, unconditional multipurpose humanitarian cash transfers during a crisis - both supporting the temporary expansion of national systems and implementation through parallel systems if national capacities are exceeded.
In an emergency, UNICEF will work with partners to protect children by:
- Helping to assess social protection systems to respond to shocks
- Providing cash grants to vulnerable households
- Supporting governments to strengthen shock-responsive social protection systems to provide capacity for additional caseloads
- Ensuring systems are strengthened including in the case of emergencies.
Just as it takes a village to raise a child, it takes close working with others to help make the right choices for children.