Social Protection Strategy Unit
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Mother & Child Support

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One of the mandates of SPSU was to implement the Health and Nutrition Conditional Cash Transfer (H&N CCT), this Pilot Programme suggests the financial support/ conditional cash transfer over the cycle of the first 1000 days of a child’s life. The pilot aims to increase the uptake of existing health and nutrition services focused on the first 1000 days of life including ante-natal check-ups, safe deliveries, post-natal care, growth monitoring, birth registration, and immunization of children through the provision of a regular and predictable cash transfer at various trigger points. Key mandates and functions of the SPSU for H&N CCT include project design, social protection operations such as social mobilization, communication, enrolment, compliance verification, payment, and grievance redressal as well as monitoring, evaluation and lesson-learning.

The objective of said programme is to create demand for health and nutrition services, promote behavioral change, and increase uptake of health and nutrition services focused on the first 1000 days of life by incentivizing health check-ups of pregnant and lactating women, growth monitoring, birth registration and regular immunization of children up to two years of age. A range of health, nutrition and behavior change communication are being offered to women from the time of enrolment of pregnancy till the second birthday of the child. The supply side is being implemented by the Department of Health – GoS and PPHI. The pilot programme in district Tharparkar & Umerkot addresses the demand side, which is H &N CCT aimed at overcoming deprived women’s opportunity cost of attending services.

While implementing the H&N CCT; the Social Protection Strategy Unit has achieved the following goals, especially in the Corona Pandemic’s situation by putting special efforts to achieve the herculean tasks for the Launch and Implementation of Health & Nutrition Conditional Cash Transfer (H&N CCT):-

  1. Align a core team of officers to design and implement the H&N CCT pilot
  2. Ensured adequate funds management for the component; i.e. opening of accounts at the peak of corona pandemic.
  3. Managed the flow of funds from FD and P&D to Payment Service Providers (PSP) as per agreed protocols;
  4. Steer the Coordination Committee for essential coordination of pilot with different stakeholders i.e. DoH, MNCHP, NSP, EPI, LHW Program.
  5. Ensured timely approval and release of benefit amount & its transparent payment to identified beneficiaries/PLW.
  6. Hired Individual Consultants on different technical positions for implementation of the Health & Nutrition Conditional Cash Transfer (H&N CCT).
  7. Hired Payment Service Provider (PSP) for transparent electronic payments to the beneficiaries of the H&N CCT.
  8. Hired a firm for the Development of Integrated Management Information System (MIS). The firm has successfully developed software i.e. “MIS & Application”.
  9. Developed an application for field registration & compliance of PLW which is sync with main system hosted in HQ.
  10. Established registration desks at identified Health Facilities; fully equipped (in terms of office furniture, office equipment and IT equipment i.e. Tablet, Thermal Printer, finger reader, Power Bank, USB and USB Hub) to perform the registration and compliance verifications in H&N CCT Programme.
  11. Trained Health Staff of Identified Health Facilities on MIS, Application and Tablet for performing the registrations without any interruption.
  12. The program H & N CCT was soft launched in 02 Pilot Districts i.e Tharparkar & Umerkot on 25th June, 2021 with the aim of expansion in whole province Sindh.
  13. The SPSU established 02 field offices at Tharparkar & Umerkot for field coordination at District level.
  14. Digital Monitoring and Reporting mechanism of the pilot was developed in MIS.
  15. Designed the payment cycle and disbursed the payments to the registered Pregnant Lactating Women (PLW) through Payment Service Provider (PSP) by maintaining the protocols for transparent payment systems.
  16. Established dedicated Helpline & GRM system to address and resolved the issues raised in field during the implementation of H & N CCT.
  17. The Honorable Chief Minister Sindh officially inaugurated the H&N CCT with the official name “Mother and Child Support Program” on 24th November, 2021 at CM House.
  18. Registration Desk in 50 Health Facilities in Pilot Districts Umerkot & Tharparkar are operational for Mother And Child Support Programme’s.