HIV-Sensitive Social Protection

This report presents the results of a mapping of HIV-sensitive social protection programmes in 15 'fast track' countries in eastern and southern Africa. The exercise, commissioned by WFP and ILO, aimed at understanding how existing social assistance and social security programmes in the region are integrating the vulnerabilities exacerbated by HIV.

Social protection can be a critical enabler of efforts to reduce HIV risks, mitigate their impacts, and increase the capacity of households to cope and respond to the risks. Social protection can also be used as an entry point to address deeply rooted social vulnerabilities and structural factors faced by those who are vulnerable to HIV infection.

Ensuring that populations who are living with, at risk of or affected by HIV and/or TB can effectively access prevention, diagnosis and treatment services is crucial. Social protection systems have a pivotal role to play in the coverage of both direct medical and non-medical costs, as well as income loss incurred due to the disease. This paper provides examples of institutional practices that improve the inclusiveness of national social protection schemes for people living with HIV and/or TB and the responsiveness of such schemes to their needs.

For adolescent boys and girls, transitioning to adulthood means facing significant social, health and economic risks. These include a lack of economic opportunities, early marriage and pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections including HIV, violence, abuse and exploitation. To support a safe, healthy and productive passage to adulthood, the Tanzania Social Action Fund (TASAF), the Tanzania Commission for AIDS (TACAIDS), UNICEF and other key stakeholders have developed, implemented and evaluated an intervention where social protection and economic empowerment interventions are combined with sexual and reproductive health education and services as part of the Tanzanian government’s cash transfer programme, the Productive Social Safety Net (PSSN).

The resources available include a project brief with a summary of the programme components and impact evaluation, as well as research briefs and reports from the baseline, midline and third wave of data collection.  

This document evaluates the Expansion and Scale-Up of HIV-Sensitive Social Protection in Eastern and Southern Africa initiative, implemented by UNICEF in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe from 2014-2018 with support from the Dutch government. It assesses the extent to which the initiative met its objectives and achieved the expected results and documents the successes, challenges and lessons learned in the implementation.

Under the initiative, UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Regional Office (ESARO) and UNICEF Country Offices provided technical assistance to the four priority countries, and documented cross-country learnings. Activities under this initiative differed in their design and execution, allowing for adaptation to country contexts. In Malawi, activities focused on monitoring and evaluation of the National Social Support Policy; designing and implementing a system to refer cash transfer beneficiaries to HIV-related social services; and creating demand for HIV services among adolescents. In Mozambique, activities focused on providing policy-level support to the operationalization of the new social protection strategy, strengthening community-based and statutory case management, and conducting social protection fairs. In Zambia, the Government and UNICEF evaluated and scaled up a package of services that aims to increase the utilization of HIV services by adolescents. In Zimbabwe, the initiative focused on strengthening the child protection case management system and ensuring linkages between the country’s flagship cash transfer programme and HIV-related services, by using payment days to deliver services. In addition, the initiative’s regional component, led by UNICEF ESARO, focused on documentation and dissemination of best practices and overall technical assistance to the country offices involved.

This paper reviews the 2010 state of the evidence on the contribution of social protection to HIV prevention, treatment, care and support, as well as protection of key populations at higher risk of infection.

This UNAIDS guidance note summarises information on HIV-sensitive social protection, sets out key principles to provide a strong foundation for programming, and describes the potential of social protection to advance HIV prevention, treatment, care and support outcomes. This brief also presents case studies illustrating how HIV-sensitive social protection is working on the ground.

The audience is HIV policy-makers and programmers at global, regional, and country levels. It builds on the UNAIDS Business Case on Enhancing Social Protection, a UNAIDS/ UNICEF/IDS report of the evidence on HIV-sensitive social protection, and regional consultations with HIV and social protection specialists.

This policy brief outlines the key pathways through which social protection can address risk factors and contribute to preventing new HIV infections. It highlights country-level initiatives and provides policy implications and recommendations.

This brief is coauthored by UNICEF and Economic Policy Research Institute. University of Oxford, UNDP and the Transfer Project have contributed to content reflected in this brief, and USAID has endorsed the brief.

This review provides a conceptual framework for HIV-sensitive social protection policies and programmes and review the impact of social protection on HIV prevention and treatment outcomes in addition to social and economic care and support. It further provides recommendations for achieving core HIV impacts, comprehensive approaches, and expanding and sustaining HIV-sensitive social protection. 

This working paper from UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti makes the case for investing in social protection efforts for adolescents. Reviewing governmental programmes, the paper examines whether and how current non-contributory social protection programmes are adolescent sensitive, and what their impacts are on adolescents.

This research brief defines 'cash plus' interventions, the menu of 'plus' components, and summarizes the evidence on their broad-ranging impacts. It further identifies lessons learned on how to make these integrated interventions work.

‘Cash plus’ interventions combine cash transfers with one or more types of complementary support. Types of complementary support can consist of (i) components that are provided as integral elements of the cash transfer intervention, such as through the provision of additional benefits or in-kind transfers, information or behaviour change communication (BCC), or psychosocial support, and (ii) components that are external to the intervention but offer explicit linkages into services provided by other sectors, such as through direct provision of access to services, or facilitating linkages to services.