Child Protection & Social Welfare

A well-supported, appropriately equipped, empowered, and protected social service workforce is essential to mitigating the damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Social service workers can build on their existing strong ties to children, families, and communities to rapidly respond in ways that are effective. However, to do so, they must stay safe and healthy. This document is intended to provide guidance on how to support the social service workforce and empower them to safely serve children, families, and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. This guidance is for governments, non-governmental organizations, social service workers, and their supervisors.

Global Social Service Workforce Alliance, UNICEF, International Federation of Social Workers, Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action

2020

Early childhood development (ECD) services have a strong, positive impact on children’s development. Research from diverse contexts shows that interventions that promote nurturing care in early learning environments significantly improve childhood development and later adult outcomes. Despite increasing knowledge on the benefits of ECD, however, much remains unknown about the early childhood workforce, the range of individuals across paid and unpaid roles who provide services to young children and their caregivers across the health, nutrition, education, and social and child protection sectors. Research supports that the workforce is one of the most important factors influencing the quality of ECD services. However, key questions remain unanswered, including:

• What does the early childhood workforce need to know and be able to do in order to carry out their roles? 
• What types of training opportunities are most effective for building the knowledge and skills that the workforce needs? 
• What types of feedback does the workforce receive on their work on a daily basis? 
• What financial and non-financial incentives impact the job satisfaction of personnel?

In an effort to address these questions, the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), a multi-stakeholder global initiative co-led by Results for Development (R4D) and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) that works to support and empower those who work directly with young children, is carrying out a series of global landscape analyses to illustrate the size and scope of the challenges faced by the early childhood workforce, while also highlighting promising practices countries have adopted in response to these challenges. Spanning a range of roles including professionals and paraprofessionals, paid and unpaid workers, and frontline workers, supervisors, and managers, from the education, health and nutrition, social protection and child protection sectors, these analyses aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of the workforce worldwide.

Vidya Putcha, Denise Bonsu, and Michelle Neuman

2020

Early childhood development (ECD) services have a strong, positive impact on children’s development. Research from diverse contexts shows that interventions that promote nurturing care in early learning environments significantly improve childhood development and later adult outcomes. Despite increasing knowledge on the benefits of ECD, however, much remains unknown about the early childhood workforce, the range of individuals across paid and unpaid roles who provide services to young children and their caregivers across the health, nutrition, education, and social and child protection sectors. Research supports that the workforce is one of the most important factors influencing the quality of ECD services. However, key questions remain unanswered, including:

• What does the early childhood workforce need to know and be able to do in order to carry out their roles?
  
• What types of training opportunities are most effective for building the knowledge and skills that the workforce needs?
  
• What types of feedback does the workforce receive on their work on a daily basis?
  
• What financial and non-financial incentives impact the job satisfaction of personnel?

In an effort to address these questions, the Early Childhood Workforce Initiative (ECWI), a multi-stakeholder global initiative co-led by Results for Development (R4D) and the International Step by Step Association (ISSA) that works to support and empower those who work directly with young children, is carrying out a series of global landscape analyses to illustrate the size and scope of the challenges faced by the early childhood workforce, while also highlighting promising practices countries have adopted in response to these challenges. Spanning a range of roles including professionals and paraprofessionals, paid and unpaid workers, and frontline workers, supervisors, and managers, from the education, health and nutrition, social protection and child protection sectors, these analyses aim to provide a comprehensive overview of the current status of the workforce worldwide.

Vidya Putcha and Denise Bonsu at Results for Development

2020

This Guide accompanies the Home Visiting Workforce Needs Assessment Tool, which aims to help Ministries and government agencies reflect on the ways in which they can support personnel delivering home visiting programs across sectors for pregnant mothers and caregivers with children under 3. 



Drawing inspiration from the UNICEF Pre-Primary Diagnostic and Planning Tool, this tool is intended for countries with home visiting programs at either the sub-national or national levels. The scope of the Tool includes home visitors who work directly with young children and their families, as well as supervisors and trainers.

 

The newly completed User's Guide completes the Tool's package. It includes supporting materials, as well as editable handouts and annexes. It is easy to download, translate and adapt to your context. The User's Guide lays out the steps needed to:

• Prepare for the application of the Tool,
• Organize and facilitate a workshop with stakeholders at both the national and sub-national levels, and
• Take action on findings generated from the workshop.


Below, you can find two versions of the User's Guide: 

Version 1: a downloadable PDF
Version 2: a ZIP file for Print, which contains:

• A Print version of the User Guide
• 11 editable handouts and annexes that can be adapted for implementation
• A slide deck, which presents an overview of the Tool

Access the Tool here.

Mihaela Ionescu and Zorica Trikic (International Step by Step Association) and Denise Bonsu, Kavita Hatipoglu, Michelle Neuman, and Vidya Putcha (Results for Development).

2020

The Home Visiting Workforce Needs Assessment Tool aims to help Ministries and government agencies reflect on the ways in which they can support personnel delivering home visiting programs across sectors for pregnant mothers and caregivers with children under 3. Drawing inspiration from the UNICEF Pre-Primary Diagnostic and Planning Tool, this tool is intended for countries with home visiting programs at either the sub-national or national levels. The scope of this tool includes home visitors who work directly with young children and their families, as well as supervisors and trainers.

You can also download the accompanying User's Guide here.

Denise Bonsu, Kavita Hatipoglu, Michelle Neuman, Vidya Putcha, Mark Roland, and Jon Korfmacher

2020

COVID-19 can disrupt the environments in which children grow and develop. Disruptions to families, friendships, daily routines and the wider community can have negative consequences for children’s well-being, development and protection. Measures used to prevent and control the spread of COVID-19, including quarantine measures such as school closures and restrictions on movements disrupt children's routine and social support while also placing new stressors on parents and caregivers who may have to find new childcare options or forgo work. With added stress, school closures and restricted movement, children and caregivers may face increased social isolation, psychosocial distress and heightened domestic violence. Movement restrictions can also make it much harder for a children or caregivers affected by violence to leave their household and seek help. In addition, stigma and discrimination related to COVID-19 may make children more vulnerable to violence and psychosocial distress. Children and families who are already vulnerable due to socio-economic exclusion, have a history of violence in the home, or those who living in overcrowded settings are particularly at risk. For all of these reasons, the continuation of case management to very high-risk children and families is a fundamental part of emergency response and should be considered child lifesaving.

All children, wherever they live and whatever their circumstances, have the right to be protected, nurtured and free from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect, maltreatment and exploitation as set out in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Respecting and supporting this right is the essence of child safeguarding. All forms of Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (SEA) are a violation of human rights.

In line with Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY) Instruction No.031, dated 20 March 2020 and Instruction, dated 26 March 2020 on Prevention and Protection of COVID-19 Infection to Children without family, relative or guardian specifically on social work and psychosocial supports for children and families affected by COVID-19, this Guideline aims to further provide technical guidance to child protection workers to better respond to the child protection risks during a COVID-19 pandemic through case management, including psychosocial support.

Download it here.

Ministry of Social Affairs, Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation (MoSVY) of Cambodia

2020

The purpose of the Child Protection in Humanitarian Action Competency Framework is to ensure a quality, harmonised, inter-agency set of competencies, indicators, and core values. This framework is intended to inform staff recruitment, learning and development, performance management, planning, and organisational design. It is hoped that this sector-wide guidance will advance the accountability, effectiveness, and predictability of humanitarian responses to affected populations. The inter-agency CPHA competencies are primarily intended for use by child protection staff in humanitarian contexts. However, they are also relevant at the global level or in development settings in support of planning and emergency preparedness. The CPHA Competency Framework aligns with the CPMS and complements the existing general Core Humanitarian Competency Framework. It is therefore transferable across people, countries, and cultures and can be a valuable tool for entry-, mid-, and seniorlevel professional development

The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action

2019

This guide has been designed to strengthen the competencies of child protection actors. The term "child protection actors" covers three categories of actors: social workers, para-social workers and community actors.

The goal of this guide is to develop the basic professional competencies of child protection actors, particularly social workers and para-social workers. This guide will also help trainers develop training content and ensure that child protection actors acquire the required information (knowledge), know-how (skills) and interpersonal skills (attitudes). The first part of the guide is intended for those who train child protection actors and is based on a child protection competency matrix. The second part of the guide includes sessions on themes specific to Terre des hommes.

Terre des Hommes / Didier Sevet, Claudie Ouedraogo, Saïdou Chojnowicz, Gaele Bertrand, Sara Lim

2018

The Minimum standards for child protection in humanitarian action have been developed to support child protection work in humanitarian settings by: Establishing common principles between those working in child protection; Strengthening coordination between humanitarian actors; Improving the quality of child protection programming and its impact on children; Improving the accountability of child protection programming; Defining the professional field of child protection in humanitarian action; Providing a synthesis of good practice and learning to date; and Strengthening advocacy and communication on child protection risks, needs and responses.

The Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action

2019

If there is one silver lining to the COVID-19 crisis, it’s probably the growing appreciation of childcare as an essential service and backbone to the growth and development of our economies. Maniza Ntekim, UNICEF’s Regional Advisor for East and Southern Africa, reminds us of the impor- tance of early childhood services, noting particularly that “If we leave early childhood education behind, we leave learning behind. If we are serious about tackling inequality, addressing the learning crisis, and making education systems work better, we have to scale up investment in early childhood education during and after this pandemic.” Early childhood services are even more important to parents now because to be productive and engaged in economic activities, they need safe, stimulating, and nurturing environments for their children. A focus on early childhood services is therefore critical in the broader plan to build back better.

Despite the well-established evidence that early childhood services are essential to human capital formation, socio-economic development, women’s employment, and increased equality, its workforce is one of the most undervalued in the world. This blog focuses on the early years’ workforce in Africa, calling for action to support them to keep services running.

AfECN

2020