Ways forward
There are four cross-cutting themes that need to be addressed if we are to make child rights and national development a reality.
These are a renewed focus on:
1. The human element:
The family and household is the critical locale for achieving change for children.
The role of the State is in enabling the family to care for, educate and protect their children.
Emphasis now needs to shift to the domestic domain, to parenting education, social transfers that lift families out of poverty and addressing the unpaid burden of care that defines so many women’s lives.
It also means improving the calibre of professionals working in the social services and as public servants.
2. Quality as opposed to quantity:
Access to services has increased exponentially over the past five years, but the quality of care and service has not witnessed equivalent improvements.
We now need a focus on professional development; pre-service and in-service training, management for performance and supervision.
Skills development needs to include the basics of information technology, communication and leadership skills.
A child rights lens and an understanding of the basics of child development should inform development for professionals who come into contact with children and there should be both minimum standards for the delivery of services and mechanisms for the users to hold professionals to account.
3. Integration rather than fragmentation and the need to go to scale:
There are a myriad of effective small scale interventions that have a proven track record in effecting change for children, but the need now is to leverage these so that they go to scale.
We need to build on what works and to this we need to address structural issues in terms of how agencies, ministries and donor partners work together.
Whilst the shift to General Budget Support, the D by D process and other reforms have started the process of integration there is a real need to now focus on the complementarity of strategies, to build modalities, shared visions and processes for working across the boundaries of Ministries or sectors.
There is also an opportunity at a local level to leverage the investment that has already been made in the school and health clinic infrastructure to use these locales as hubs for children and families; whereby they also offer child protection, parenting education, social protection and information services.
This would call for a real co-ordination of interventions, which has historically been the challenge preventing the move to scale.
An effective results-based sector dialogue and co-ordination amongst multiple Ministries, donor partners, local government authorities and non-state actors will be critical to ensure an integrated and coherent social protection framework and the advancement of children’s rights.
There will need to be a concrete, time bound and achievable plan of action in place to enhance the capacity of the Social Welfare department and cross-ministerial political will must be built if Tanzania is to join up the dots on its fragmented social protection efforts and build a coherent system that lifts families out of poverty.
Important questions about the institutional structure will also need to be addressed including: where the overall responsibility for policy formulation, inter-governmental co-ordination, and oversight will lie; how responsibilities for implementation will be divided and what types of administrative reforms will be required to support these; and what mechanisms and modalities will be best suited for co-ordination between government and development partners.
4. Acknowledging and gaining commitment to the cost of investing in our future:
Finally, the response to HIV and Most Vulnerable Children has been characterised as an emergency response. As such the significant financial input from donor partners has been appreciated and used to effect real short-term change.
But as we move forward we need to acknowledge that the reliance on off-budget financial support from donors and on volunteer efforts from community members in the Most Vulnerable Children Committees (MVCC’s) prevents the Government from appreciating and costing the real investment that needs to be made in social and child protection.
Not only is reliance on external partners precarious, but it also enables the State to avoid its statutory duty towards social protection as a citizen’s entitlement.
The current response is an emergency response, not a developmental response and we need to generate the political will and make the fiscal case for investing in social protection and children now if we want development to occur tomorrow.
