Provision of lifesaving child protection services to most vulnerable children in Herat, Badghis and Ghor provinces The proposed project will respond to acute child protection risks by scaling up lifesaving child protection activities to prevent, mitigate and respond to abuse, neglect, exploitation, and violence faced by girls and boys, enabling equitable, inclusive and safe access to quality child protection services for children and families affected by multiple shocks that leads to deepening humanitarian needs due to existing amp recent crisis including conflict, displacement, poverty, drought and the pandemic. The proposed project will address the protection needs of the most vulnerable children and families through:1) provision of case management services to provide children with an individualized response to address their specific protection needs, using vulnerability criteria, and through referral mechanisms that enhance their access to other services, service mapping and referral pathway mechanisms developed by WCUK through existing projects 2) provision of  psychosocial support services (PSS) and Psychological First Aid (PFA) through static and mobile Child Friendly Spaces operated by trained facilitators. A case worker will be assigned to each CFS to provide additional capacity to safely identify and refer cases from the community and provide any immediate assistance 3) strengthening community-based child protection committees through training and mentoring to enable them provide support in identification and referral of CP cases in their respective communities to the service providers and to support coordinated responses to child protection needs, particularly case management needs 4) working with community-based networks to conduct awareness-raising and information sharing on critical child protection issues to enhance child protection knowledge in affected communities and respond to identified needs. These structures will help reduce child protection risks such as child labour, begging and other child protection concerns through their communication and awareness-raising activities and advice to communities and families and  5) provision of  protection assistance (cash-for-protection) for the most at-risk individuals living in vulnerable households to enable them to access services and meet basic essential needs and  respond to protection risks and reduce the risks of adopting negative coping mechanisms in the short-term.  Cases will be identified and referred to the IPA activity through WCUK’s complementary case management and community-based child protection work. Standardised information will be collected through these referrals to ensure consistent, transparent and comprehensive targeting based on the agreed risks and vulnerability criteria and aligned with project outcomes and objectives.
 
The project will be implemented in four AHF priority districts (2 in Herat, 1 in Badghis and 1 in Ghor) over six months’ period.   The project will also be implemented using programmatic, operational and logistic capacities of ongoing projects implemented by War Child UK in three provinces to maximize effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed project.