Social protection is increasingly considered a development success story. At the same time, it still does too little to account for social differentiation and to address vulnerability, as opposed to poverty. Child sensitive social protection (CSSP) has gained considerable momentum, particularly in a developing country context, raising questions about its concept and practical implications. Child sensitive social protection requires a critical perspective and for context to guide its design and delivery.
The paper highlights three elements of child vulnerability that social protection should address in order to be labelled child-sensitive: 1) biological and physical needs; 2) strategic needs (referring to children’s limited levels of autonomy and their dependence on adults for support); and 3) institutional invisibility and lack of voice in policy agendas. The paper’s findings include the following:
- The practical examples, and their degree of ‘child-sensitivity’ in terms of their response to children’s practical and strategic needs, show that no set of interventions can be considered child-sensitive across the board. Claims about what makes social protection child-sensitive are often based on (widely agreed) assumptions rather than sound evidence about what works for children in a particular situation.
- There are no universal truths about how to design and deliver child-sensitive social protection: the degree to which a policy, instrument or intervention meets children’s practical and strategic needs is highly context-, design- and delivery-specific. The term ‘child-sensitive’ should be used with caution to avoid it becoming a misnomer and to ensure that it denotes policy initiatives that truly aim to improve children’s lives.
- Children’s unique risks also make for unique opportunities. The practical examples in this paper suggest that CSSP need not be a separate stream or form of social protection. All types of interventions have the potential to carry a degree of child-sensitivity, responding to one or more of children’s practical and strategic needs. Further research is required to investigate the extent to which measures and interventions can respond to all needs simultaneously without undermining their initial objectives or exacerbating the needs and vulnerabilities of other social and demographic groups.
