The Effectiveness and Impact of Social Protection in support of Children’s Wellbeing
Social Protection Regional Issue Brief: 1
Highlights
Well-coordinated cash transfers and social services support families and safeguard children, ensuring the realisation and advancement of child rights for all children. Cash transfers and social support services are integral components of social protection systems in Europe and Central Asia. Global evidence shows that social protection supports the realisation of children’s rights in a number of ways, contributing to poverty reduction and an adequate standard of living for children. Cash transfers, if well designed and effectively implemented, have been shown to reduce child poverty across a variety of intervention designs. Social protection interventions also impact, directly or indirectly, on the realisation of a number of other children’s rights, for example cash transfers and support services can enable children and their families to access health care, early childhood services, and primary and secondary education programmes. Most countries in the region have some kind of cash transfers and social support services for children. However, the evidence relating to effectiveness of these programmes on child wellbeing is less discussed than in some other regions. This brief summarises research and evaluation evidence on the effectiveness of different social protection programmes, i.e. cash transfers and social services on wider aspects of child wellbeing in the region.
