National Strategies to Strengthen, Finance, and Scale Up the Social Service Workforce as a Critical Pillar of Child Protection Systems, with Example from Bulgaria, Uganda and Armenia

A competent social work and wider social service workforce is an integral component of child protection systems, including effective prevention and response to violence, poverty, discrimination, social exclusion and a range of other systemic social and economic challenges for children and families.

The social service workforce is critical to implementation of the UNCRC, Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), The Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW), European agenda for human rights and children’s rights and achievement of the SDGs globally.

A well-planned, developed and supported[1] social service workforce is a life-changing and powerful force for boys and girls, men and women, families and communities and for delivering a wide range of goals in the fight against poverty, social exclusion and violence.

• Around half of all children in the ECA region experience or witness violent discipline at home and many also experience violence at school
• 666,000 children living in institutional care in the ECA region
• A study of seven countries in the region documented that when women experience violence in the home, children are likely to experience abuse too. Multi-sectoral services for children, men and women can break the cycle of intergenerational transmission of violence.
• The costs of domestic violence in the ECA region are estimated in the millions, both for services to care for survivors and for loss of productivity and income
• Child marriage compromises access to education, health and individual agency for girls in excluded minority groups and their lives and those of their children are put at risk, and their contribution to national development is lost.

Investing in a strong, well-planned, developed and supported social service workforce represents a strategic investment in the solution to these challenges and in building human capital and inclusive societies.