The Overall Policy Goal:

A sustainable and integrated system of care for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) that ensures that they have the same opportunities as non-OVC in our country to become healthy, well-adjusted productive adults.

The Policy Objectives:

“Increase the percentage of children in general, and OVC in particular, who:

live in a nurturing family environment and in safe and secure shelter

decrease number of children currently living in the street from 20,000 to 8,000 through outreach and mediation with their families;
decrease the number of new street children from an average of 2,000 per year to 500 per year through the support of neighborhood-based child protection networks that assist parents to be better parents and reduce the number of children who flee a difficult home environment;
decrease HIV infection rate of parents though effective HIV education campaigns targeting high risk parents and adolescents;

have access to primary education

eliminate the gap in primary school enrollment between low-income double orphans and all other children by providing conditional cash transfers to enable 400,000 out of school double orphans to enroll in primary school;
In the best case scenario, assist another 260,000 OVC and street children to attend primary school through the conditional cash transfer program;

have equal access to basic health and psycho-social services

ensure that pregnant mothers living in 116,000 households fostering double orphans and in 48,000 households at-risk of abandoning their children receive pre-natal care through conditional cash transfers targeting;
ensure all children 0 – 5 in 116,000 households fostering double orphans and in 48,000 households at-risk of abandoning their children receive regular well-baby preventive health care;
ensure that 260,000 HIV affected households and households fostering double orphans have access to psycho-social support and home health care services.

The Principles and Values that guide the policy:

focus on prevention
preference for family and community-based responses
cost-effective and sustainable interventions
collaboration, involving public and private players from multiple sectors
protection of child’s rights recognized by the Convention on the Rights of Children

Annual Investment Targets

	% GDP	Annual Recommended Budget
Base Case	0.2%	$74,000,000/year
Best Case	0.3%	$111,000,000/year

Priorities among and with OVC Groups:

Our strategy will serve the most vulnerable children, which we define as double orphans living in households earning less than $2 per day and street children. Given our prevention focus, we are more concerned children at risk of being abandoned to fend for themselves in the street.

Our estimates for these groups are as follows:

Orphans: Orphans total 4.2 million nationwide. Double orphans total 790,000. Of these, an estimated 50% or 400,000 are out of school and/or living in poverty.

Street Children: Street children are estimated to number 20,000 and are located primarily in the capital city.

Children at Risk of Abandonment: Households at risk of abandoning their children are estimated to be 1% of all households. This would amount to a total of 48,000 households and 240,000 children, if we assume an average of 5 children per household.

Priority Interventions:

Develop neighborhood-based child protection networks that target and support households with vulnerable children and/or are at-risk of abandoning their children and assist street children already in the street to return home.
HIV/AIDS prevention education and counseling program targeting parents, street children, and adolescent orphans. Include basic information on reproductive health.
Conditional cash transfers for households with double orphans and, in the best case scenario, for households at-risk of abandoning their children. Transfers will be made to the school and health posts and their continuation will be contingent upon the degree to which the OVC who are targeted maintain a good school attendance and targeted women attend pre-natal and well-baby clinics.
Provide psycho-social counseling and home-based care services to HIV/AIDS affected households, including basic preventive health education for caretakers, children, and orphans

The total cost of implementing all of our top-ranked interventions would be $117.42 million per year and we have at least $74 million and at most $111 million per year to work with. Thus we will need to either cut the number of programs and/or cut the number of beneficiaries per program.

In this case, perhaps the most logical first step is to merge the Pscyho-social counseling intervention with the Home-based care for Children affected by HIV. In our new scenario, we will assume 260,000 households receive the combined service at a cost of $55 per household for a total of $14.3 million, allowing a net savings of $6.52 million or a total for the strategy of $110.9 – right on target for our best case scenario.

To get down to our base budget of $74 million, we will need to make more cuts.

Given this outcome, cutting the number of beneficiaries per program may be our best option.

To bring us to our base case scenario, we must cut another $37 million.

As a first step, we will cut the Family Tracing program of $12 million, since some of these activities might be supported indirectly under the combined Psycho-Social Counseling/Home-based care for Children affected by HIV intervention.
We will cut an additional $25 million, by cutting the number of beneficiaries for our Conditional Cash Transfers program to serve the 400,000 Double Orphans only at a per unit cost of $70 instead of $80.

The table below shows the results of our budget cutting exercise:

Intervention	Double Orphans	Street Children	Children at-risk of abandonment	Estimate of Total Beneficiaries	Estimated Cost per Beneficiary	Estimated Total Cost
Neighborhood-based child protection networks	400,000 children in 200,000 households	20,000 children from 20,000 households	240,000 children in 48,000 houshoseholds	268,000 households	$ $100 per household	$26.8 million per year
HIV AIDS prevention education	400,000 children	20,000 children	240,000 children	-	-	$5 million per year
Conditional Cash Transfers	400,000 children In both Best and Base Case	20,000 children Only in Best Case	240,000 children Only in Best Case	660,000 children 400,000 in Base Case	$80 per child per year in Best Case $70 per child in Base Case	$52.8 million per year $28 million in Base Case
Pyscho-social counseling and home-based services for households with double orphans and children affected by HIV/AIDS	116,000 households with one or more double orphan and 720,000 children in 144,000 affected by HIV/AIDS	-	-	952,000 children in 260,000 households	$55 per household per year	$14.3 million per year
Total All programs	-	-	-	-	-	$110.9 million per year in Best Case $74.1 million per year in Base Case

Roles and Responsibilities in Management of OVC Strategy Components:

OVC Program Component	Responsible Ministry
Neighborhood Child Protection Networks	Ministry of Local Government
HIV/AIDS Prevention Education	National HIV/AIDS Committee
Conditional Cash Transfers	Ministry of Education and Health, in collaboration with Ministry of Social Affairs
Psycho-social and home based care	Ministry of Social Affairs subcontracting NGO in each region to manage program at municipal level.

Coordination Mechanism:

The National OVC Commission including the following entities:

Ministry of Social Affairs
Ministry of Education
Ministry of Health
Ministry of Local Government
Key NGOs and FBOs active at the national level serving OVC.

It will operate at the national, provincial and municipal levels. These groups will meet at least once per quarter and be involved in revising the OVC strategy as required, develop the annual OVC operational targets and implementation plan, and monitor progress in implementing approved plans.

Back to Step 4: Narrowing Down your Policy Options

The Overall Policy Goal:

Annual Recommended Budget