Operational research on the delivery of the EU Child Guarantee pilot in Greece
Close to one in four children living in the EU in 2022 were at risk of poverty or social exclusion (Eurostat, 2023), a remarkable increase from one in five children before the Covid-19 pandemic (Eurostat, 2020). Poverty and social exclusion prevent children from accessing basic services and undermine their right to a healthy upbringing, which is supposed to include opportunities to learn, thrive and participate in their communities. This can significantly impact children’s development, hindering their ability to realise their full potential as adults - essentially putting them at a lifelong disadvantage.
The Child Guarantee, launched in the EU in 2019, aims to address these challenges through providing children with free access to education, healthcare and childcare, and ensuring decent housing and adequate nutrition. Greece was one of the four EU Member States (alongside Bulgaria, Croatia and Italy) that were selected to introduce innovative models of such services under the EU Child Guarantee pilot between 2020-2023, a scheme designed to lead the way towards a Child Guarantee that tackles child poverty and social exclusion for children from disadvantaged backgrounds across the EU. In Greece, particular focus was placed on children with disabilities, children in precarious family situations, children and young people in migration, and children in institutions or alternative care across the region of Attica (UNICEF, 2022).
Commissioned by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Alma Economics researchers in Athens conducted extensive operational research into the implementation of the pilot’s key innovative models. For Greece, these included:
Supporting deinstitutionalisation and community-based care,
Strengthening the foster care system,
Introducing supported independent living,
Investing in life skills and job readiness for vulnerable youth, and
Strengthening inclusive education.
We conducted two waves of interviews with implementing partners, frontline and administrative staff of statutory organisations, as well as other programme and government officials. Those interviewed in Wave 1 shared their experiences in planning and preparing interventions for their respective models, managing the interventions, and collaborating with other stakeholders, as well as early insights into the sustainability and replicability potential of each model. Those participating in Wave 2, when most interventions had been fully rolled out, elaborated on the inclusivity of the interventions as designed and delivered, how these are or can become part of an integrated system of services for children and their families, and how they contributed to meeting child poverty and social exclusion needs or gaps in the country. They furthermore shared suggestions for the sustainability and replicability of each model after the conclusion of the pilot.
Lessons learnt from this research are valuable both for the scalability of the country-specific innovative models in Greece, as well as the expansion of the Child Guarantee in all EU Member States. With reference to the latter, UNICEF has now published its synthesis report compiling research findings from all four pilot countries. Read the report to see how the lessons learnt from the Greek pilot can contribute to the expansion of the EU Child Guarantee - as well as to find out about the innovative approaches implemented by the other three pilot countries!
The full UNICEF synthesis report is available here.