Social and behaviour change
Improving children’s lives requires changes. Changes require understanding how people behave.
What is social and behaviour change?
UNICEF supports systems which provide children with essential services like nutrition, health care, protection, and education. However, offering these services alone doesn’t guarantee improved well-being for families, as various barriers can prevent caregivers from utilizing them effectively.
Those barriers are often complex and require actions not only on demand but also on the service delivery side. For instance, analysis may show that the services are too far away, or not operating after working hours when parents are available, or that service users may have been treated poorly.
UNICEF social and behaviour change (SBC) programming helps to identify barriers and their behavioural and social drivers, and to spot opportunities and enablers for change.
Equipped with evidence, we apply a wide range of scientific tools, foster community, and partner dialogue for developing solution strategies, and engage children, caregivers, communities and service providers in translating those strategies into effective actions.
Telling people what to do does not work. SBC is about creating the right conditions to change.
The challenge
The country’s children suffer from refusal to vaccinate. Twenty per cent of 2-year-old children remain unprotected from the main vaccine-preventable infections like polio and measles (MICS 2023).
Child malnutrition, especially among children under 2 years old, is a prevailing issue in Kyrgyzstan. In 2021, only 15 per cent of children aged 6-23 months received the minimum acceptable diet, and 26 per cent met the minimum dietary diversity (NIMAS, 2021). This means that their cognitive and academic progress is at risk, and they have increased susceptibility to non-communicable diseases like Type-2 diabetes, hypertension, and early-onset heart disease (Rose et al. 2017).
More than 40 per cent of population do not believe that the family environment is better for children with disabilities than specialized residential care. Moreover, families with children with disabilities encounter stigmatizing attitude of pitying which further exacerbates the situation of children with disabilities. (UNICEF, 2022).
Acceptance and silencing of domestic violence and stigma related to mental health are another challenge that undermines the well-being of children and adolescents.
The available evidence points to the existing of different barriers that impede boys from good learning achievements and girls from freely choosing their professions. These barriers need to be understood through further research and addressed.
Attempts to change those practices have often been limited to stand-alone campaigns which were not informed by behavioural science and community evidence, and thus brought none or little of the social and behaviour change necessary for realizing child rights.
Our work in social and behaviour change
UNICEF uses a social behaviour change (SBC) approach to help children get vaccinated, eat healthily, learn successfully, and live without fear of violence and discrimination.
By involving children and parents in discussions, UNICEF helps find creative solutions to their challenges. In 2023, this approach helped to create services and community support for families with children with disabilities. In 2024, working with young people and experts, UNICEF developed new ways of speaking about mental health, reducing stigma and encouraging early support.
Behavioural studies have also informed national plans on immunization and improving children's diets and supported efforts to reduce stigma around disability and mental health.
To ensure that every child is vaccinated, UNICEF focuses on community involvement, strengthening health systems, and effective communication. We support local leaders to promote positive social norms, and work with the Ministry of Health to improve the training and tools used by health workers. Social listening helps UNICEF to inform decision-makers about public concerns. Behaviour change techniques are being used to create educational materials, events and campaigns.
In emergencies, UNICEF helps children, caregivers, and communities get involved in designing response plans, improving feedback, and providing critical information. We also assist in creating national plans for risk communication and community engagement during crises, using principles from the Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) framework.
SBC is becoming a key part of all UNICEF programmes, with increasing recognition of its importance for achieving lasting results for children.