Many years ago, child protection and welfare programming was largely built around single-issue projects funded by external donors. These were not sustainable and rarely achieved scale. As the world faces mounting challenges from a polycrisis of climate, conflict, and health challenges, the focus has shifted to more holistic approaches that better meet the needs of children and families globally.

 

Children and youth typically experience multiple adversities simultaneously – consider a child with disability living in poverty, or a displaced youth exposed to violence. Research increasingly shows that combining economic supports with non-cash social services increases both the impact and duration of positive outcomes for children. Cash alone cannot solve most households’ problems even if many low-income households benefit from cash transfers. “Cash plus care” programming is accordingly being increasingly pursued by major global multilaterals such as UNICEF and the World Bank, along with a wide array of other organizations.

 

Progress in this direction will strengthen human capital by addressing the social determinants of health and education status. But ‘cash plus care’ programming also needs the systems and people to deliver. We continue to see important advances in the strengthening of the social service workforce around the globe, as well as the development of case management systems that allow the workforce to develop individual case plans meeting the needs of children and families. This is a further paradigm shift away from single-issue programming that is already showing benefits for communities around the globe.

We are also seeing significant progress in the areas of public finance and resource mobilization.  Maestral has been working in numerous countries to assess the costs of programming for children and youth and to assist in advocating for budgetary and non-budgetary financing for protection. In Moldova, we worked with our partners in the USAID Global Development Alliance Changing the Way We Care to demonstrate that investments in a minimum package of services for children would yield an impressive 17 percent internal rate of return. More countries should pursue similar analyses to show the long-term benefits of investing in children’s wellbeing.

 

Finally, there have been important innovations in various issue areas within child protection. Many of these were showcased at the first Ministerial Conference on Violence Against Children in November 2024, an extraordinary event that has helped to advance political will for advancing policies to prevent and address violence. Research on parenting programs is showing impressive cost-effectiveness in improving household welfare and protection. There have been great strides in advancing mental health and psycho-social support in both humanitarian and non-humanitarian interventions worldwide.

 

Maestral is pleased to have been a part of much of the global work and dialogue on advancing these innovations. We will be pursuing initiatives in 2025 to significantly scale up our capacity to contribute to our collective learning in these and other areas. In doing so, we will also be identifying and spotlighting the best technical work of our many partners around the world.

Francesca Stuer

Maestral International, together with colleagues from the Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC) initiative, global social work experts, and experts from China and neighbouring countries, participated from 30 November to 3 December 2024 in the conference ‘Synthesizing Knowledge: Chinese Social Work Practice Research and its Dialogue with the World’ as well as the subsequent roundtable on ‘Global learning on Implementing the Continuum of Care’ held at Peking University, in Beijing, China.

 

This conference provided a global platform for discussing learning regarding practical aspects of social work practice and social work research, including the importance of working across disciplines, social work in the context of disasters and addressing grief, action research to strengthen collaboration between institutions, and recent efforts to standardise social work education and recognise equivalence of social work diplomas across ASEAN countries.

 

The subsequent roundtable organised by UNICEF China, focused on critical issues related to children’s care and protection, including the evolution of care reform, the role of social workers in supporting gatekeeping and child placement, transformation of institutions, supporting kinship care, promoting foster care and adoption of children with disabilities. 

 

Both the conference and roundtable provided a well-organized and engaging platform for sharing insights and fostering meaningful dialogue. These events underscored the importance of global collaboration in advancing social work practice and care reform. Looking ahead, the European Association of Schools of Social Work (EASSW) will host a conference on “Contemporary Challenges of Social Connectedness” in Salzburg, Austria, from 23–26 June 2025. More information is available at ecswe2025-salzburg.eu. Maestral looks forward to continuing its engagement with partners to strengthen social service workforce efforts worldwide.

Maestral continues to demonstrate technical leadership within the Changing the Way We Care initiative. Collaborating with teams in Guatemala, India, Kenya, and Moldova and at regional and global levels, Maestral ensures tools and strategies reflect best practices and local needs. From supporting transition in India to fostering innovative family-based care in Moldova, Maestral works closely with local technical experts to help shape impactful reforms. Below are recent highlights.