An estimated 24 million children across the world live without their parents, and numbers of children outside of parental care are growing. The effects of the loss of parental care on children can be devastating.
Children without parental care find themselves at greater risk of discrimination, inadequate care, abuse and exploitation. Inadequate care can also impair children’s education, emotional and physical development and health. Poverty and deprivation have a major impact on children’s ability to stay with their parents, and may also affect the ability of extended or other families to offer homes for children.
This research brings together the two separate policy arenas of social protection and children protection and care by exploring the linkages between social protection and the provision of adequate care for children in SSA. As such, the research proposed in this concept note can be considered to meet at the interface of social and child protection. Both ‘sectors’ or policy areas have great potential in improving children’s lives but, despite their interrelatedness, have developed in largely separate silos.
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