Targeting social assistance to the poorest population, including children, offering the latter an opportunity to remain in the family, was one of priority areas of EveryChild Moldova during the recent three years. In 2007, 28% of children in Moldova lived under poverty line, and 3% lived in extreme poverty. To change those indicators and to improve the situation in the country, in 2007, the Ministry of Social Protection, Family and Child, supported by EveryChild Moldova and Oxford Policy Management, launched the reform of the existing social assistance system. The reform’s key elements included revision, development, and implementation of some government policies to raise effectiveness of social assistance, including the quality of the delivered social assistance services.

The Project Support in the delivery of effective and sustainable social assistance services supported the MSPFC within consisted seven Activity Directions, three of which are the main ones (1 – cash benefits, 2 – social services development, and 3 – donor agenda harmonization), and four are inderdisciplinary (4 – public finance management, 5 – stakeholders and civil society consultation, 6 – monitoring and evaluation, and 7 – mass-media, legislation, and training). During the project implementation, a new priority direction was included: Activity Direction 8 – organizational development.

Some of the most important policies, developed during the implementation of the project Support in the delivery of effective and sustainable social assistance services, involving, apart from government authorities, the civil society and beneficiaries, were the National Strategy for the development of an integrated social services system, the Cash-benefits Law, the Social Services Law, Referral Mechanism, Supervision Mechanism, the Regulation of the Social Services System, Training Strategy for the social assistance staff, Minimum Quality Standards for the Foster Care Service, etc. The majority of those documents were approved by the Parliament, Government, or Ministry. They became operational and their implementation was applied in practice. Simultaneously, the MSPCF was supported to deliver and implement a Communication Strategy, resulting in the improvement of the Ministry’s profile and visibility, and conferring to this institution effectiveness and considerable share in the promotion of social assistance policies.

Who is the final benefit of this project?

An efficient social assistance policy, retargeted together with a set of improved community social services, will reduce the level of vulnerability, transitory and chronic poverty of Moldovan population. This will be done both directly, by increasing the life standards of poor population through cash benefits, and indirectly, by ensuring the fact that a bigger number of persons at risk to become poor will benefit of necessary social services to maintain accepted life standards.