Projects

Changing The Way We Care (“CTWWC”) is a bold initiative designed to promote safe, nurturing family care for institutionalized children or children at risk of child-family separation. This includes strengthening families and reforming national systems of care for children, including family reunification and reintegration, development of alternative family-based care (in keeping with the United Nations Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children). CTWWC is a consortium of three partners (Catholic Relief Services, Lumos and Maestral International), joined, through a Global Development Alliance (GDA), by three donors (MacArthur Foundation, USAID and GHR Foundation). CTWWC is starting up in a context of growing interest in care reform, and as a result of a growing global understanding that institutional care of children is a significant problem that will be best addressed through collaboration between national, regional and global stakeholders to develop alternative care systems supportive of family care. Grounded in the work of three demonstration countries (Kenya, Guatemala, Moldova), as well as regional and global engagement, CTWWC will seize the momentum to help advance care for children toward and over a tipping point where government and non-government care systems, civil society initiatives, and public attitudes and behaviors focus on keeping children in safe and nurturing families.

Changing The Way We Care website

Maestral Senior Associate Mari Hickmann worked with CRS as subject matter expert in the US President’s Emergency Response for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) to develop content for CRS’s Strong Local Primes Initiative (SLPI). The work focused on developing a solutions package for the CRS SLPI to support local actors as they put key principles and standards for MER and M&E systems into practice. Maestral’s contribution to the solutions package included standards for routine data quality assurance, guidance on data analysis and visualizations, and a checklist of considerations to implement indicator changes.

The Maestral team worked with UNICEF Turkey and the Ministry of Family, Labour, and Social Services (MFLSS) to strengthen the foster care system in Turkey. The team conducted a number of comparative desk reviews on short-term foster care with recommendations for new service models that more fully protect the rights of children in need of care and protection, including children with disabilities in need of specialised foster care. To support these new service models, and strengthen existing foster care services, the team updated basic foster care training packages, developed a new specialized training package for foster carers of children with disabilities, and also supported specialized capacity building programmes for technical personnel.

Maestral, in partnership with UNICEF Malaysia, the National Population and Family Development Board (LPPKN), and the University of Putra Malaysia reviewed started this assignment by reviewing existing training modules on parenting of young children for parents and care givers (Belaian Kasih) and parenting of adolescents for parents and care givers (Mutiara Kasih) and conducting a formative assessment to better understand parenting support needs among vulnerable households in Malaysia. The team then built upon this learning to develop and pilot a new positive parenting programme (Semarak Kasih) that is designed to prevent and respond to violence against children in Malaysia. The team provided training to 25 government staff as facilitators and 6 academics as coaches in the new Semarak Kasih positive parenting programme. They then piloted the programme in Selangor (N = 76 families) and in Sabah (N = 34 families) with results indicating reduced risk of violence against children. The team also developed additional parenting modules on 1) sexuality and reproductive health, 2) children with disabilities, 3) digital parenting, and 4) child protection, and conducted stakeholder meetings along each theme. They also developed a Semarak Kasih Trainer Manual and provided training to 11 trainers. In the Spring of 2020, in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Maestral team developed evidence-based resources that could be disseminated over social media including 1) TIPS for positive parenting in the COVID-19 context; 2) TIPS for virtual child-protection related case management by social workers and social welfare practitioners; and 3) a dissemination strategy for these resources.

UNICEF Video on the Semarak Kasih Parenting Programme pilot

Protecting children during COVID-19: Tips for social workers & social welfare practitioners

Learn more about the Tips for Social Workers during COVID-19 by watching – A Maestral Conversation with UNICEF Malaysia, the Malaysian Association of Social Workers, & Yayasan Chow Kit integrated service center.

COVID-19 Parenting Tips

Maestral President, Philip Goldman, is a Member of the Lancet Commission on the Institutionalisation and Deinstitutionalisation of Children. This Lancet Group Commission advocates global reform of the care of separated children through the progressive replacement of institutional provision with safe and nurturing family-based care. It provides essential information on both the global scale of institutionalisation and its physical, social, and mental health consequences. It presents a pragmatic roadmap for carefully managed change.

The full Commission is accessible online.  

Maestral produced a two-volume discussion paper to inform UNICEF’s forthcoming 2022-2025 global strategic plan, which will include a core component on bringing child protection to scale. The first volume provides a contextual framework for scaling, including a historical perspective on the child protection sector, UNICEF’s role, and how child protection is currently positioned to go to scale. It also provides a definition for scaling and highlights key considerations to take into account when developing a scaling strategy, including case studies from various country contexts. The second volume provides a practical conceptual framework that UNICEF country offices can use to support scaling up child protection.

In 2015, the European Parliament called on the European Commission and the European Union Member States, “ to introduce a Child Guarantee so that every child in poverty can have access to free healthcare, free education, free childcare, decent housing and adequate nutrition, as part of a European integrated plan to combat child poverty”. Following the subsequent request by the Parliament to the Commission to implement a Preparatory Action to explore the potential scope of a Child Guarantee for vulnerable children, the Commission ordered a study to analyse the feasibility of such a scheme. Maestral consultants Véronique Lerch and Anna Nordenmark Severinsson developed the Target Group Discussion Paper on Children in Alternative Care for this feasibility study.

Child guarantee for vulnerable children

Maestral International supported UNICEF India in developing and finalizing the UNICEF Ending Violence against Children (EVAC) country strategy with a focus on prevention in collaboration with Ministry of Women and Child Development, UNICEF’s implementing partners and State offices. Following an organized national level learning event on prevention of violence against children, the lead consultant provided a document on promising practices to prevent and respond to VAC in India. In consultation with internal and external stakeholders, a final strategy on ending violence against children, package of interventions, indicators and differentiated approaches was developed for the Indian context and existing results framework. To support the strategy, a revised concept note for resource mobilization and funding proposal was also developed.

Strategy for Ending Violence Against Children

Maestral International worked with the UNICEF LAC Regional Office to develop a child protection workforce strengthening framework and baseline UNICEF can use to gauge and orient its future contributions in the child protection workforce. Together with UNICEF, the Maestral team developed a framework for child protection workforce strengthening in Latin America and the Caribbean; developed tools to assess the workforce at national and sub-national levels; analyzed the child protection workforce in four countries including Mexico, Bolivia, El Salvador, and Barbados; and presented country level and aggregated findings and recommendations during two webinars in English and Spanish. The project deliverables were informed by the UNICEF and GSSWA Framework for Strengthening the Social Service Workforce for Child Protection and related tools.

Maestral and partner Plan Evaluation, worked with UNICEF Angola Country Office, the C4D Manager, INAC/MASFAMU, Ministries of Justice and Human Rights, Health and Education, and national civil society organizations to develop and support the implementation of an evidence-based methodology to promote responsible, nonviolent fatherhood and gender-equitable childrearing practices. The methodology was based on evidence gathered through a baseline study which generated a more in-depth understanding of dynamics of gender and fatherhood in Angola and on a desk review that will explored issues on and around gender-equitable childrearing practices and fatherhood at a global, regional and national level.

The Maestral team worked with the UNICEF China Country Office to identify good practices, lessons learned and evidence gained through experience which UNICEF China and partners should retain for future use to help strengthen the Child Friendly Spaces (CFS) as a model for a) a child protection program response during emergencies and b) a community-based child protection and welfare service delivery mechanism that can be scaled up with quality in China.

Evaluation of NWCCW-UNICEF Joint Child Friendly Spaces Project in China 2008-2017

Maestral supported the development  and design of a  comprehensive SGBV prevention strategy and an implementation plan that aimed to bring and create behavioral, attitudinal change as well as addressing the social and cultural norm changes related to SGBV, HP and SRHR at the national and county levels. The team built upon best practices locally and within the region, the strategy is transformative and involves the process of behavioral, attitudinal, and social change which starts with prevention and moves on to protection, response and reintegration.

Comprehensive Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Prevention Strategy for Liberia

Together with the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance and UNICEF MENARO, Maestral conducted a review of the social service workforce in eight countries in the Middle East and North Africa and developed a regional report summarizing findings and recommendations for workforce strengthening  This involved a desk review, contextualizing methodology and tools in each country and working with UNICEF Country Offices and government officials representing line ministries to ensure data collection. Maestral used the collected information to create a baseline of information and data on the status of the social service workforce in each of eight countries in the MENA region (Djibouti, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, Sudan and Tunisia). In each country, Maestral worked closely with the UNICEF Country Office and the Country Task Force (i.e., Steering Committee) to validate the findings of the review and to develop action plans for social service workforce strengthening.

Multi-country review on the state of the social service workforce in the Middle East and North Africa Region

Maestral is supporting the Sierra Leonean Ministry of Social Welfare Gender and Children’s Affairs (MSWGCA) to formalize/institutionalize social work training by bringing together practitioners and academics of social work to review and standardize existing curricula to make them context specific as well as user-friendly, building the necessary competencies required for the practice of social work in Sierra Leone. Through this work, Maestral will assist with formalizing the training of social workers in the MSWGCA.

Under the guidance and support of the UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office and in close collaboration with country offices, Maestral conducted a review of parenting programmes in the East Asia and the Pacific region and developed guidance for planning, designing and strengthening public positive parenting programmes and create an enabling environment for nurturing care, policies and services for children. The guidance was designed for key national level stakeholders engaged in or responsible for promoting parenting interventions. The parenting review involved desk review, developing methodology and tools, and data collection in seven countries: Cambodia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea Thailand, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam.

Maestral International Senior Associate Severine Chevrel supported Caritas Lebanon (CL) and Catholic Relief Services in implementing quality protection programming in-line with international standards for unaccompanied minors and children (UAM) and survivors of gender-based violence (GBV) in Lebanon. This effort included drafting guidance notes of standard operating practices for service providers and contributing to the design of a concept note to support service providers.

Maestral in partnership with DevStat scoped options for creating a “child footprint” index, providing detailed information about each option, including strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities, with an overview of methodological and strategic considerations and challenges. Maestral and DevsStat presented strategies for how UNICEF could take forward the development of a selected tool or index, including options for operationalization that considered the role of third-party institutions supporting the work or hosting the Index.

Maestral Senior Associate David Tobis developed and taught a module on using data and evidence for policy and program decisions to strengthen child protection systems. The presentation was part of the Harvard FXB course, Child Protection Executive Education.

Maestral provided technical support in the development of Terre des Hommes Netherlands (TdH NL) three-year country strategic plans for Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda as well as a regional plan. The project included reviewing challenges, achievements and lessons learned, as well as assessing the opportunities, networks and stakeholders in the countries where TdH NL operates.

Maestral conducted a mapping of the family strengthening and children’s alternative care landscape in Zambia. The project included an analysis of the linkages, strengths, weaknesses, gaps and challenges in relation to family strengthening and children’s alternative care in Zambia considering issues such as funding, human capacity, evidence-base and levels of knowledge and awareness. The resulting report was disseminated to Zambian stakeholders in order to help inform discussions during the Zambia national consultation on children’s alternative care and care reforms.

“The Provision and Strengthening of Support for Street Children, Families and Communities in Malawi” is a Retrak project funded by Humanitarian Dignity Fund (HDF) aimed at providing protection and other basic services to street connected children. Maestral conducted an evaluation that assessed the performance of the project in terms of the following: output and outcomes, achievements, and identifying good practices, challenges and lessons learned. The evaluation also investigated the overall effectiveness of the project against the objectives and provided further insight and learning to Chisomo Children’s Club, helping them to plan the way forward for the organisation, including how to adjust, build on or phase out activities. The final evaluation assessed the extent to which the project was succeeding in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, relevance and sustainability.

Maestral provided technical assistance to Uganda’s MoGLSD and MoIA for the development of Comprehensive national child protection policy and costed action plan. Specifically Maestral is worked with the key stakeholders to assess the relevance of the underlying vision, principles and actions of the OVC policy in; make recommendations on the current OVC policy to pave way for a new child policy; review all identified child related policies including the Child Labour Policy for their appropriateness with a view to align them into one comprehensive Child Policy; develop a comprehensive Child Policy that addressed all four pillars of children’s rights to Survival, Development, Protection and Participation; and to develop a costed Child Protection National Action Plan that is aligned to the new child policy.

Maestral worked with key stakeholders to assess the institutional effectiveness and operational capacity of the Social Welfare Fund (SWF) at both central and decentralized level in Yemen to delivery social cash transfers, understand how the conflict affected the SWF’s capacity, diagnose institutional challenges and bottlenecks, and propose strategies, next steps, and approaches to mitigate identified concerns and improve the SWF’s capacity to deliver cash transfers to beneficiary list recipients throughout the country.

In 2015, Elevate Children Funders Group (ECFG) Care Working Group (WG) members pooled funds to support research and advocacy initiatives to better understand key drivers and funding streams for alternative care. To this end, ECFG commissioned Maestral International, LLC to conduct a funding stream analysis in Uganda and Nepal in order to verify funding stream assumptions and get a clearer understanding for the role private and government funding plays in promoting (versus discouraging) different forms of family and alternative care. The study findings will help actors within and outside of the countries to advocate for shifts in funding and increased awareness on the risks of residential care, ultimately resulting in better care for children and more support for families.

Maestral supported the development of the new National Plan of Action to end violence against Women and children in Tanzania, by facilitating the work shop with all stakeholders, support the writing of the strategy, and developing the costing and budgeting of the national plan of action.

Maestral International and the Global Trauma Project (GTP) were commissioned to support the East African Community (EAC) in developing a Regional Minimum Package of Services for Vulnerable Children and Youth (VCY) with an accompanying conceptual framework on Psychosocial care and Support (PSS) for VCY. The EAC Minimum package provided policy and programmatic guidance to the six EAC Partner States (Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda) and other relevant regional actors (such as international organizations, civil society and donors) on how to provide a coordinated and comprehensive set of minimum services, including HIV and AIDS, for vulnerable children and youth, to include PSS.

Pusat Kajian Perlindungan Anak (“PUSKAPA”) and Maestral International (“Maestral”) collaborated to support UNICEF and the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs to generate an effective model of integrated child welfare services that comprises early detection and identification, referral and follow up for child centered case management. The integrated child social welfare programme model is called Program Kesejahteraan Sosial Anak Integratif (PKSA-I).

In collaboration with the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance, Maestral provided an in-depth analysis of the social service workforce-supportive policies and legislation in order to promote the importance of this type of legislation, provide specific examples that feature the workforce and profile strategies implemented by countries that have effectively prepared and enacted legislation. The availability of (or gaps in) policies and legislation that provide a mandate for and definition of the social service workforce has a profound impact on the development and sustainability of social services in a particular country. The prepared report provides a glimpse into the momentum that is building around policy development in support of the workforce.

Maestral International conducted a mapping and formative evaluation of the protection system of Comoros. This mapping and assessment is to contribute to the development of a national policy and action plan for protection of children in the Comoros. Through a formative and advisory approach, the team aimed to strengthen national capacities and ensure that the findings and recommendations of the mapping and assessment are appropriate by the Government of the Union of the Comoros and its stakeholders. The development process was conducted with multi-sectoral consensus on an action plan to strengthen the child protection system.

Maestral and Rutger’s University are working to review and develop a two-year social work diploma program and a one-year social work certificate program in Malawi, in partnership with the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Welfare and Magomero College. The overall goal of this consultancy is to improve the quality of the workforce through an established competency-based social work education curriculum – integrating knowledge (theory), values, and practice skills through academic instruction and a structured field practicum or internship. In order to adequately prepare students and those already employed, it is important that educational competencies and outcomes are culturally relevant and closely linked with policies and requisite job functions for respective professional and paraprofessional positions to ensure implementation of the National Child Protection System at the district and community level.

Maestral is developing and producing content for a toolkit that will serve as a resource for faith-based organizations seeking to transition from models of institutional/orphanage care to family and community-based care.

Maestral is providing capacity building support and technical assistance to the National Preventive Group on Ill-treatment and Torture of the Human Rights Commissioner (Ombudsman) of Azerbaijan to better monitor and report on violations of children in justice, social care and special education systems in order to: improve independent child rights monitoring capacity; prevent or reduce cases of child rights violations in closed facilities; and improve coordination, response mechanisms, and reporting on child rights monitoring.

Maestral International with Grupo de Economistas y Asociados (GEA) conducted a rapid assessment of the social assistance system in Tabasco, Mexico between June and December 2014. The findings of the rapid assessment were presented to the government of Tabasco in January 2015.  The rapid assessment contains a framework and recommendations to strengthen the existing social assistance system in Tabasco. The Government of Tabasco has approved the recommendations for implementation. Maestral, in collaboration with the government of the State of Tabasco, will implement the recommendations of the rapid assessment that are identified as priorities by the Government.

Maestral assisted UNICEF WCARO Child Protection and Social Policy team to develop a costing model for the child protection component of the Ebola Recovery plans. Activities included rapid assessment of relevant reports and policy documents related to the three affected countries of Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia and develop a model that could be used by all country teams.

Maestral conducted a literature review focusing on the psychosocial care and support landscape in Africa to inform the development of the REPSSI Strategy for the period 2016-2020. The literature review included an extensive search of published materials and existing mapping initiatives addressing the needs of OVCY to identify key areas in PSS programming for REPSSI to consider in its strategy development.

Provide Support in the Finalization of the draft Guidelines on Alternative Care of Children in Nepal and developing an implementation plan with costed interventions. Maestral is working with stakeholders to develop guidelines to ensure that children in need of care and protection benefit from care and protection decisions in their best interests and from quality prorgrammes and services which will contribute to the fulfillment of their right to protection, as well as survival, development and participation.

Maestral supported the Government of The Gambia in assessing, designing and implementing a comprehensive Child Protection System, including assessing and strengthening the capacity of the Department of Social Welfare to effectively lead its implementation, coordination and monitoring and evaluation. The second phase of the project included building on the mapping and assessment to facilitate a consultative and participatory process to deliver a comprehensive strategy and costed plan of action.

Maestral will clarify the Department of Social Welfare’s legally-mandated roles and responsibilities regarding the identification, placement and care of Children Without Appropriate Care, develop a framework through which the DSW intakes, processes and provides solutions and monitoring for Children Without Appropriate Care under its jurisdiction, develop the institutional capacities of the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare/Department of Social Welfare to execute that framework.

Maestral was engaged by Capacity Plus/USAID to conduct a comprehensive mapping, assessment and programming exercise on the child protection systems of six states of Nigeria. This was the first time so many mapping and assessments had been completed in one country.