The social policy area of EUROsociAL+ in IILA accompanies the Under-Secretariat for Chilean Childhood to improve programmes that promote the comprehensive development of children and adolescents, as part of Chile Crece Contigo (Chile Grows With You)
In January, the second specialised advisory mission of the Spanish expert Ferrán Casas to the Under-Secretariat for Chilean Childhood was carried out in Santiago, Chile, aimed at strengthening the programmes of the “Chile Crece Contigo” Social Protection Subsystem.
The framework of the EUROsociAL support action coincides with the National Agreement for Children, which seeks to promote the comprehensive development of all children and adolescents in Chile with a view to achieving the maximum development of their capacities; this, through mechanisms of both prevention and protection of children and adolescents whose rights have been violated – so that they can resume a positive development trajectory for their well-being.
In this context, the Government of Chile requested EUROsociAL’s intervention to support the process of review and improvement of the Chile Crece Contigo programmes, whose mission is to ensure the access of all children to a set of universal benefits, in combination with specialised benefits and differentiated services and benefits. Moreover, in parallel, to make progress in defining a Monitoring Information System to follow the development trajectory of children and adolescents.
Based on this, the technical support of the consultant during the mission was structured: on the one hand, progress was made regarding the evaluation of thinking on the social impact of the Chile Crece Contigo programmes; and, on the other hand, a group review was carried out of the work undertaken by the expert at the level of identification and analysis of systems for monitoring the situation of children at the population level, in an international perspective, with the proposal of key variables to be monitored.
In addition, during the three working days, several technical meetings were held to stimulate collective discussion on various topics of interest; among them, a Workshop for thought and dialogue on indicators, which was followed by group work for the construction of indicators for the National Plan of Action for Children and Adolescents, with the presence of technicians and managers from different departments of the Ministry of Development. There was also a Workshop for Dialogue and Discussion on the concept of Subjective Well-being and its implications for public policies and professional technical intervention, with the participation of about fifty people from various backgrounds (representatives of the Ministry of Development, Health and other Ministries, as well as NGOs and academia).
Over the next few weeks, EUROsociAL’s work will continue at a distance to ensure the consolidation and closure of the technical products agreed within the framework of the support action.
