Integrated Child Protection in Emergency assistance for the most vulnerable girls and boys affected by conflict, drought, and COVID-19 through the provision of PFA and PSSS, Case Management and referrals, and strengthening community-based child protection system in Hirat, Badghis, and Ghor War child UK is proposing an integrated emergency child protection response project to address the growing humanitarian child protection needs of drought, conflict, Covid-19, and other emergency affected boys, girls, women, and men in three provinces (12 districts) of Afghanistan over six months.  The purpose of the proposed project will be to ensure vulnerable children and families have timely and effective access to child protection assistance and increased their psychosocial wellbeing with increased resilience to future shocks.  The proposed project will have two main objectives 1) To strengthening community-based child protection mechanism to create a protective environment and to address child protection issues and create a sustainable link for the promotion of child protection in the affected communities2) To increase the psychosocial well-being of boys and girls affected by conflict, drought, and Covid-19 through the provision of PFA, PSS. 3) To provide specialized child protection services through the case management approach, including FTR

War Child UK will conduct Baseline and end-line assessment to systematically collect, analyses, and measure progress against planned objectives and indicators in the three targeted provinces. 

The proposed project will also strengthen Community Based Child protection mechanism through capacity building training, coaching and mentoring, organizing joint awareness-raising campaign, and strengthen coordination, referral, and link CBCPCs with multi-sectorial actors, CPANs and DCPANs members to mainstream child protection in other sectors such as education, health, food, livelihood, shelter and water sanitation and this will help create a sustainable approach for longer-term services beyond the project period.    

WCUK will establish and train six Mobile Child Protection teams who will target hard-to-reach areas and locations including house-to-house outreach in the host communities. These teams will be responsible for delivering the following activities: Psychological First Aid to affected children case management support awareness-raising activities to children and adults PSS activities to children and provide identification, Family tracing, and Reunification services to unaccompanied and separated children.  

Static child protection services will be provided through 9 child-friendly spaces across the three targeted provinces. WCUK will implement the following activities: provide safe space for children to play, learn, and access psychosocial support to enable their continuous development in a protective and conducive environment. 

WCUK will establish a team of trained caseworkers to provide Case Management to emergency-affected boys and girls including unaccompanied and separated children in the three target provinces to address child protection needs and reduced negative coping mechanisms. Setting up help desks in the affected communities in the targeted areas where UASC cases can be identified and reported to the caseworker team for family tracing and reunification will be part of the project intervention. 

The project will be implemented in close coordination with MoLSA and DolSA departments, child protection in emergency sub-cluster, Child Protection action network, and other humanitarian actors working in the same locations in order to efficiently fill the gap, link with the other ongoing programs, and strengthen the local capacity to respond to the child protection needs in emergencies in the long term.