UNICEF Children and Adolescents Program

1. UNICEF supported the development of the Child Protection Centre service model in Garissa, Malindi and Nakuru. Through the CPCs Civil Society Organizations provided comprehensive child protection services including counselling, referral and family reintegration to children and families. 2. A total of 66,346 children (35, 439 girls, 30, 907 boys) were reached with messages on prevention of and response to abuse, violence and exploitation. A child-friendly information booklet produced as a key tool in violence prevention 3. UNICEF in partnership with the International Rescue Committee and local authorities brought essential services to survivors of Gender Based Violence at the Lodwar Referral hospital.  The Turkana Wellness Centre  offered psycho-social, medical and counselling services to survivors. 4. AMREF Health managed a CPC in Dagoretti, Nairobi with a special focus on the rehabilitation and reintegration of children in street situations, and preventing children becoming victims of violence, abuse, exploitation, neglect and separation from families. Through these combined services, a total number of 99,889 children (48317 girls/51572 boys) were reached with various child protection services during the project period.  5. Child protection outreach activities, including on GBV, reached  213,773 adults and 55762 children with various child protection messages including violence against children and harmful traditional practices 6.  UNICEF supported operation of the national Child Helpline 116.  The call center based in Nairobi has 22 trained telephone counsellors on a 24/7 basis, providing immediate professional telephone counselling and referring cases that require actions to the Children Officers and other service providers across the country as appropriate. The upgrade of the help-line system now links the database with the Child Protection Information Management System(CPIMS).  The upgraded system improved the functioning of the helpline including speedy response to all child abuse cases.  7.  UNICEF continued support to the government regular cash transfers which expanded its reach over 1.3 Million beneficiaries covering a total equivalent of 3 million children in 2018 in all 47 counties. In 2017 this number exceptionally reached 3.5m children due to a temporary expansion of SP programmes triggered by the drought covering 450 households additional. The increase of regular programme from 850,000 beneficiaries is mainly due to the implementation of the new 70+ programme which enrolled in 2018 - 520,000 new beneficiaries. Furthermore, government spending on social protection increased to more than 40 bn KES in 2018/2019 as compared to 16bn in 2014 equivalent of 0.4% of GDP. 8. , UNICEF’s key support was to create an enabling environment by providing technical and financial support towards the update of the Social protection policy, the development of a social protection legal framework and a strategy.  9. To leverage county resources, UNICEF supported social protection legal and policy frameworks in Kakamega, Kitui, Vihiga and Mombasa. and played a leadership role in the advocacy for higher and sustained social protection financing through the 2nd Social Protection Conference week led by the Deputy President and where strong commitment were made towards sustainable and innovative financing for the sector. 10. UNICEF and other development partners continued to support the government to develop a legislation and a comprehensive policy and legal framework for social protection sector. UNICEF in partnership with WFP supported the updating of the sector review, the drafting of social protection policy and a national investment plan. This contributed to the adoption a Universal Social Pension, known as the 70+ which further expanded the coverage of the NSNP as well as the number of children reached. 11. UNICEF supported finalization of the mapping of the national and county level social protection coordination mechanisms which contributed to the development of a roadmap to strengthen the coordination capacity of social protection stakeholders at national and county level. 12. To ensure effective multidimensional poverty reduction among social protection beneficiaries, UNICEF supported and scaled-up two models of cash transfer linked to nutrition (NICHE) and MNCH (Immarisha in Kakamega and Boresha programme in Vihiga). 13. 

The overall objective of this objective of this proposal is to strengthen the protective environment for children through focusing on four different aspects of the child and social protection systems; - the legal and policy frameworks, systems building and consolidation; county level modeling and coordination and behaviour change