Elana Gaia, Social Policy Specialist, UNICEF CEE/CIS and Denise Stuckenbruck, Child Protection Specialist, UNICEF ESARO – Family support and social protection, Expert Consultation on Family and Parenting Support, UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti Florence 26-27 May 2014

1. 1
Children,
Families and
Social Protection
in CEE/CIS
Elena Gaia, Regional Office CEE/CIS
Expert Consultation on Family and
Parenting Support
Florence, 27 May 2014

2. This presentation
 Children & Families in CEE/CIS: some trends
 Social Protection: is it supporting children and
families?
 Promising practices
 Going forward
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3. Fewer women under 20 give birth compared to 10 years ago, with the exception of
Albania, Kyrgyzstan, Georgia and Azerbaijan. Fertility rates among 15-19 year old women
in these countries, as well as in Romania and Bulgaria are over 30 per 1,000 live births.

5. More than 170,000 children were left without parental care in 2011 in 19 countries, half of
them in the Russian Federation* and almost half girls. More than 60% of children left
without parental care in Azerbaijan and Tajikistan were boys. Disaggregated data are not
available in all countries.

6. Children are left without parental care due to different reasons. While in Hungary it is
predominantly due to temporary inability of parents to care for the child, in the Russian
Federation and Belarus it is deprivation of parental rights. Abandonment of children is
more common in Montenegro and Kazakhstan.

8. More than half of young people in Serbia, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and
Bosnia and Herzegovina were unemployed in 2011.

10. Evidence suggests that in some countries disability is one of the main reasons for a child to be
left without parental care. Close to 90% of children in Serbia and 60% of children in the Czech
Republic who were left without parental care had a disability.

11. Not many countries have records on the type of care solutions for children left without
parental care. Among countries, where data are available, placement in residential care is
more common in Armenia and Tajikistan. About 15% of children in Georgia and
Kazakhstan left without parental care were adopted in 2011.

12. More than 1.4 million children in 26 countries were in formal care in 2011. Half of these
children are in the Russian Federation. The ratio of children in residential care to those in
family-type care is still high in some countries. A positive change in this ratio over the last
decade is particularly noticeable in Bulgaria. The overall rate of children in formal care
decreased in Latvia, Belarus, Romania, Estonia, Slovenia and Bosnia and Herzegovina
between 2002 and 2011.

13. Out of the total number of children having left public residential care , the proportion who
were re-integrated to their families or placed in family type care varied from 16% in
Kyrgyzstan to 79% in Slovenia. On average 27% left residential care alone.

14. Social Protection in CEE/CIS
 UNICEF Integrated SP Framework includes
family support services as one of its four
components
 Cash transfers not sufficient to address the
vulnerabilities a child or family faces
 ‘Social services’, broad term, varying definitions
 Focus on those services which aim principally to
reduce social and economic vulnerability of
families and children to poverty and deprivation
 Family and child support services, including social
work, and home-based care

15. Keeping Families Together: role of SP
 Systems over-reliant on institutional responses fail to provide
individualized support
 Not designed to stimulate and help families overcome difficulty
 When asked why their children were placed into care, many
parents said it was because they could not find or access other
forms of support
 Weak outreach, leading to low take-up
 Excessive administrative barriers
 No institution responsible for supporitng families and children as a
whole
 Limited guidance to local governments on how to plan, finance and
implement services
 Social workforce small, not trained, low paid
 Funding and perceptions still favour institutional care
http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/2012_on_social_protection.pdf

16. Social Protection in CEE/CIS: effectiveness
 Gaps data availability, and lack of assessments of
the impact of social protection on children; lack of
programmatic evaluations and impact studies
 Low value of cash transfers and low coverage of
children and families in need, leading to limited
poverty reduction
 Social support and care services underdeveloped
and underfunded
 Fragmentation and lack of coordination
 As currently structured and administered, SP not
effectively relieving deprivations and vulnerabilities
of children, and often unable to reach those most in
need

18. Cross-sectoral approaches and interventions
• Young child wellbeing & home visiting –
child protection, ECD and health
• Second decade, second chance –
services for youth

19. Promising practices: Integrated Social Services
Armenia
 Single point of entry
 Comprehensive family assessment
 Joint case planning and management
 Co-location of services (or referrals)
 Sense of partnership, focus on meeting needs
 Based on ‘territorial social plans’ to determine
provision of services
 Provision of counseling, rehabilitation, financial
assistance, in-kind assistance, temporary shelter,
social care at home and in residential care, legal aid

20. Serbia: Family Support Services
 Model family outreach service in four cities, reaching 400
families with over 1,000 children in the coming 2 ys
 Contributes to preventing removal of children from families and
helps facilitate returns, through addressing challenges of
poverty, disability, mental health, substance abuse or neglect
 Technical support to development and standardization of new
community services enabling family-based care: in 41
municipalities, tailor-made support and coaching to model the
application of national standards
 To increase parental skills and awareness about the early years,
model parenting support centres in Belgrade and Nis: peer and
professional counseling and programmes to build parenting skills
for new parents (model assessed in 2013)
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21. Equitable reforms: the number of children with disabilities should decline at least at the
same rate as the total number of children in residential care. In Serbia, the proportion of
children with disabilities in residential care decreased from 66% to 48%.
Trend in total number of children in residential care and number of children with
disabilities in public residential care, Serbia, 2000-2011
Source: UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, TransMonEE 2013 Database (www.transmonee.org) .

22. Albania: House of Colours
 Centre for specialized support to children and families in difficult
life circumstances, Tirana Municipality (since 2011)
 Target group: 500 children from 7 Roma and Egyptian
communities in Tirana, living on the streets and engaged in petty
street jobs
 Outreach team works directly with the communities and in the
streets to identify cases of child abuse (2,500 families)
 Provides emergency 24hrs services for most severe cases of
children in street situation, including temporary accommodation
 Children and their families are supported with psycho-social,
legal, health services; also, meals and educational activities
 For mothers: vocational training, job opportunities, assistance
during legal and administrative procedures, and referral to other
social services
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23. Bulgaria: Community-based outreach services for
young children and families
 Three Family Centres established in Shumen region,
inter-sectoral service, providing outreach integrative
social, health and educational services and measures
for prevention and support of small children and
families at risk in most marginalized communities
 The design is tailored to address the real needs of
children from excluded families and to utilize all
potential entry points for making difference inside
segregated Roma communities
 Flexible and adaptable services, based on the
assessment of risks and needs during the mapping of
vulnerable communities
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24. Romania: Multifunction Centers for Early Childhood
Development
Model: 17 centers developed, with start-up costs estimated
at € 5,000
For each class of 20 children there are 5 Roma children fully
integrated with all costs supported by local community
Multi-disciplinary teams in place
Parents participating as volunteers
Communities aware and fully involved in the Centers
Guide to establish Multifunctional Centers developed and
distributed
Model to be expanded possibly through ESF
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25. Romania: Community Based Integrated Services
 Social protection, education, health for all children 0 to
18 and their families
 Contribute to prevention of violence, neglect and
exploitation, keeping families together and in their
communities, increase access to health care and
education
 Model independently evaluated as successful and cost
efficient
 To be scaled up in the North-East region (the poorest
region in Romania) through ESF
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27. Family: what value added for the SP and
child rights agenda in the region?
• New insights into existing evidence for better policy design
• Impact of investment in preventative social services
compared to responsive policies and economic aid
• Can drive analysis & adjustments in SP regulations to
accomodate changing nature of family structures, e.g. LGBT
• Helps to expand focus beyond 0-3 into second decade
• Allows for wholistic understanding of the family: role of
kinship care, pensions
• Helps balance child rights with gender equality issues by
giving weight to rights of individuals, e.g. parental leave,
support to employment for parents, etc.
• Resonates well with increasing focus on social norms
• Can better resonate with certain political and philosophical
views, e.g. activation

28. Further inquiry
• Impact of preventative services on child outcomes
• Cost benefit of investment in preventative social
services compared to responsive policies and
economic aid later on in life
• Intra-household dynamics and political economy of
care
• Implementation at the decentralised level

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Thank you!
egaia@unicef.org