tween families and counselor and the visits in the final 16-18 months serve to monitor the progress of the family, working on the weakest issues and to activate the demand for subsidies and social services families are eligible to. During the initial home visits, the social worker and families agree to fulfil 53 minimum conditions which range from family dynamics, housing and employment, to health and education. In practice, many of these minimum conditions are already satisfied at entry in the program, which highlights the importance of initial conditions, as each social worker ended up working on different set of conditions with each family (see table A.1 in Appendix)<sup>9</sup> . The social worker provides information and guidance on how to access existing programs and services in the community to help improve on these outcomes.

Each year a social worker is responsible for 50 families on average (SD 25) and there are about 2400 social workers working under CS in each year between 2002 and 2006. The turnover of social workers is substantial, and during these 2 years 20% of participant families received visits by more than one social worker.<sup>10</sup> The direct cost of home visits (including the cost of the visit itself, the training of social worker, and supervision; and excluding the salary of social workers) amounts on average to USD$131 per family/year (or, equivalently, USD$263 for the two years of home visits, with per family cost ranging from USD$200 in accessible municipalities to as much as USD$1000 in very remote municipalities). In the first year of operation, the home visits accounted for almost all budget of the program. After 2004, the financial resources allocated to this component remained almost unchanged, and its weight decreased to 4% of the total budget leaving way to the supply side component of the cost (Raczynski, 2008, and Camacho et al., 2014). The home visitation component of the Colombian program _Juntos/Unidos_ was cheaper at USD$80 per family/year.

**Guaranteed access to monetary subsidies** Participating families receive a monthly cash transfer (called _Bono Solidario_ ) during the first 24 months, with the size of the transfer ranging between USD$8 and USD$21 per month (decreasing over time).<sup>11</sup> For the subsequent three years, families

> 9The conditions are set at a very low level of exigency, so that, for example, most of the 19 minimum conditions to be met by families at the end of the intervention regarding education and health are fulfilled prior to home visits by CS social workers (see table A.1 in Appendix A.

> 10There is substantial variability in the average caseload of social workers across Chile. Take the year of 2005. In the regions of Aysen and Magallanes the average load is 16 (0.8) and 14 (1.1) families, respectively. On the other extreme, there the following regions: Tarapaca with 53 (7.3), Coquimbo with 58 (1.5), Bio-Bio with 60 (50.2) and Araucania with 61 (27.3). The numbers in parenthesis are the number of inhabitants/ _km_<sup>2</sup> in 2002, to relate the caseload with the sparsity of the population. Data on the demographic characteristics for 559 social workers who worked on CS between 2007 and 2009 shows that 88% of them are women, 80% have a degree on social work, and the average age is 26.

> 11The amount of the Bono is: $21 per month for the first 6 months, $16 per month between month 7-12, $11 per month for months 13-18, and $8 for the last 6 months. These amounts are for 2006 but they are adjusted yearly for inflation. Transfers begin at about 15% of the average income of eligible families in the first six months after enrolment in CS, and gradually decline to about 10% of income by the end of the two years of home visits.

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