From Social Protection to Social Inclusion for Children in Poverty: Bridging the Disparities with Integrated Policy Design

Targeting social protection interventions for children in poverty is a well accepted policy paradigm. However, by virtue of their design, targeted policies focused exclusively on poor children remain largely disconnected from the domains of educational and social development of non-poor children in the society. This is because, in stratified societies of the world, rich and the poor children follow vastly divergent paths of education, socialization and social mobility. In this paper, we present research findings form an intervention that purposively links the wellbeing of the most vulnerable children with the educational and social development of more privileged children in the society. We submit that for social protection policies to become a truly transformative force for children in poverty, such policies should be purposively conceived in conjunction with the education and developmental imperatives of children from more privileged backgrounds