Social protection and children
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About
Social protection is broadly understood as ‘a set of public and private policies and programmes undertaken by societies in response to various contingencies in order to offset the absence or substantial reduction of income from work; provide assistance to families with children; and provide people with health care and housing’.[1]
UNICEF perceives social protection to be a basic human right: governments have an obligation to provide both economic and social support to the most vulnerable segments of their population.
Child conditioned social protection
The definition of child conditioned social protection –- social protection affecting children -- encompasses social assistance and economic support directed at the family or at the individual child and social services including family and community support and alternative care (2006).
[2]
Specifically, the definition includes:
(1) social assistance/economic support conditional/unconditional cash transfers, child care grants, social pensions, tax benefits, subsidized food, and fee waivers; and
(2) social services for children and their families including protective (and preventive) services such as foster care, adoption, residential treatment, family and community support services for children with special needs as well as early childhood care.
It is commonly argued that social protection should go beyond raising income and consumption standards and be transformative by not only reducing poverty but by enhancing social equity and social rights of poor, vulnerable, and marginalized populations.
Social protection programmes and polices seek to help poor and vulnerable people counter deprivation and reduce their vulnerability. Components of social protection that aim to promote children’s survival include cash transfers, the provision of free healthcare services, short-term safety nets for food security in times of crisis, and ensuring that those eligible for social protection programmes have access to them, for example through systematic birth registration.[3]
See also
Cash transfers and children
Social Cohesion
References
- ↑ [Barrientos A, DeJong Jocelyn 2004, Child Poverty and Cash Transfers, Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre]
- ↑ Kamerman S, Gatenio Gabel S, 2006, Social Protection for Children and their Families: A Global Overview
- ↑ [Barrientos A, DeJong Jocelyn 2004, Child Poverty and Cash Transfers, Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre]
