4Children

Fajardo, Sara A.

Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4children)

Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children, or 4Children, is a USAID-funded project improving the health and well-being of vulnerable children affected by HIV and AIDS and other adversities. 4Children draws on global evidence that illustrates that HIV and other hardships are best prevented and addressed when people have access to both high-quality health and social welfare services. 4Children helps countries identify practical and appropriate policies, programs and services that reduce the risk of HIV and maltreatment, and promote children’s well-being. Its approach addresses the unique needs of each child and family, including strengthening the frontline social service workforce and case management systems.

Project Details

Official name of project: Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children)

Project years: 2014–2021

Location: Global

Value of the project: $72 million

Donors and consortium partners: Funded by USAID, CRS leads the project with consortium partners: IntraHealth International, Maestral International, Pact, Plan International USA and Westat

Scope of activities: 18 core activities will improve guidance and standards for programs helping vulnerable children; best practices will be applied through work in 13 countries

Resources

Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children) English PDF

Fact Sheet • 2 Pages

Download

Goals of the Project

Tens of millions of children have lost one or both parents to AIDS-related illnesses and other adversities. Additionally, 36.7 million people are living with HIV, and millions more children face the effects of HIV on their family. While progress has been made in reducing death from AIDS, children still need protection and strong social systems to prevent the transmission of HIV and to mitigate the effects of HIV in their lives.

4Children and its partners improve the quality of life of these children by building the technical and organizational capacity—at all levels and relevant sectors—of government and civil society. The project strengthens essential components of countries’ social service system, and improves connections between health and other sectors. As a result, government and civil society actors can better perform their functions and scale-up their work with proven outcomes for communities, families and children.

What We Do

Strengthening Social Service Systems

At its core, 4Children builds the capacity of systems supporting vulnerable children. It develops and supports strong collaboration across all sectors to promote cohesive, strong national and subnational social service systems. By defining a shared vision, we ensure our assistance is demand-driven, context-specific and results-oriented. 4Children also engages children, families and communities to provide input throughout the project, so that programs respond to needs. The project addresses a wide spectrum of technical and organizational areas—such as strengthening case management and referral mechanisms—to enable governments and civil society organizations to better provide for and protect children.

Providing Comprehensive Services

4Children’s holistic approach assures integrated, comprehensive services. It develops technical guidance on areas like mental health, early childhood development and preventing and responding to violence against children. It draws on a country’s existing services to offer guidance and apply quality case management practices, ensuring children and their families can access all they need to be healthy, safe, stable and educated.

Building the Evidence

4Children builds the evidence base for effective care and protection interventions through rigorous operations research and evaluations of past and current interventions. Research is ongoing in areas such as parenting interventions, social protection, and case management, 4Children uses evidence to document what works. This is then used to inform national policies for vulnerable children, and influence the design of future interventions.

Sharing What Works

4Children is uniquely positioned to build evidence on what works, to apply our learnings directly to our program, and to help develop guidelines and policies for organizations and governments working with children. The project informs next-generation programming by managing platforms like ovcsupport.org, and by collaborating with global networks like the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance and the Better Care Network.

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Important Acronyms

AGYW: Adolescent girls and young women
HES: Household Economic Strengthening
ALHIV: Adolescents living with HIV
SWSS: Social Welfare System Strengthening
ECD: Early Childhood Development

To learn more, contact the 4Children team at: contact@4-children.org.

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4Children

4Children