Child Protection Responses and Transformative Social Protection in Kenya and South Africa: Can social grants improve the wellbeing of children affected by violence and neglect?
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Date
2023
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
University of the Western Cape
Abstract
This research critically explores how children from low income neighbourhoods in Kenya and
South Africa experience formal child protection interventions couched within a child rights
framework in response to violence and neglect. The study also considered the role that social
assistance grants play in mediating children’s wellbeing outcomes as a means for addressing
child maltreatment and vulnerabilities. The main thesis of the research is that despite a close
link having been established between violence against children and poverty in the causation of
complex vulnerabilities and ill-being for children in Africa, solutions addressing the twin
challenges appear to be mutually exclusive. While social assistance grants in the form of cash
transfers remain a popular strategy for alleviating short to medium-term poverty, their potential
for addressing neglect and violence against children which is linked to poverty has remained
fairly unexplored. To examine this question critically, the Wellbeing in Development
framework by Gough, McGregor and Camfield (2007) was used. The framework dynamically
conceptualises poverty as multi-dimensional, and wellbeing as both a process and an outcome
through which individuals can self-evaluate what constitutes happiness and a good life in a
given social and cultural context.
Description
Philosophiae Doctor - PhD
Keywords
Child Wellbeing, Child protection, Child neglect, violence against children (VAC)