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The social welfare system should provide a continuum of services from prevention to response through comprehensive primary, secondary and tertiary services. Studies have demonstrated
that Indonesia has made good progress in developing tertiary services for children who have experienced various violations of child special protection, while secondary services are
inadequate. Critical to child special protection in Indonesia is the continued development of the resilience of the family, through social work functions with vulnerable families and the strategic
use of social cash transfers to decrease a family’s vulnerability to various shocks. This situation analysis is recommending a particular focus on the role of the Ministry of Social
Affairs, which is responsible for many aspects of social welfare, and the local Offices of Social Affairs, as well as the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection and local level
Bureaus, which are also responsible for monitoring and coordinating many aspects of child special protection policymaking. It also recommends a focus on the role of a professional and
well-trained cadre of social workers. As such, the policy recommendations include:
• Set up comprehensive secondary services to ensure early identiication and preventive services to children and families at risk.
• Develop a strategic vision and a long-term costed action plan to deine the role of social workers in a broader, comprehensive child special protection system at national and sub-
national levels, capable of providing a continuum of services from prevention to response. This plan should prioritize the following:
o Ensure a cadre of professional holistic social workers, with numbers meeting an internationally accepted population ratio the paid employment of para- professional
social workers can be explored as a cost effective means to reach larger populations. o Ensure that recent graduates are well equipped with effective social work skills that
promote family care and build family resilience to withstand various shocks through working with social work training colleges Ministry of Social Affairs and with state and
private universities.
o Develop appropriate in-service training agendas to upgrade the skills of existing social workers.
o Review existing social welfare legislation and policies to ensure a solid legal framework of support for the emerging strategic role of social workers.
o Work with the Ministry of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection and similar local level Bureaus in coordinating other cross-cutting initiatives and referrals of children
to local Offices of Social Affairs and relevant service providers, as well as monitoring systems.
• Continue to undertake reforms related to justice for children to ensure adequate complementary efforts supportive of the social welfare role in preventing and responding to
child special protection violations with appropriate coordination and linkages.
5.6.2 PREVENTIONBEHAVIOUR CHANGE
Changing negative attitudes, beliefs and behaviours that violate child rights is a central concern in the process of building a national child special protection system. Social, cultural and behaviour
change is an inherent part of life, whereby knowledge, values and practices are continuously shifting, and have a direct impact on individuals, communities, organisations, institutions and
society. The behaviour of individuals, groups and institutions is largely based on the views, attitudes, demands and practices that promote and permit, sanction and constrain what is
acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. Therefore, where the legal framework and policies change, and social welfare and justice systems act to prevent, respond to and mitigate the impact
of child special protection violations or deficits, a critical feature of a national child special protection systems approach must be to affect behavioural, institutional and societal change to
promote and ensure child rights to protection, care, welfare and justice.
Strategies and approaches by social welfare systems would involve reinforcing those behaviours and actions that are in the best interests of children, as well as changing those behaviours and
corresponding actions that people believe will benefit children, but which are actually damaging to both children and society, such as corporal punishment and the placement of children in
inappropriate forms of care.
Poverty is often viewed as an underlying cause of violence against, and exploitation and abuse of children. While recognizing that violence, exploitation and abuse know no economic boundaries
and that child special protection applies to children across all economic strata, nevertheless, reducing some of the unique vulnerabilities caused by poverty will reduce violence, exploitation
and abuse for a large number of children. Therefore a critical cornerstone of child special protection includes building the resilience of families to cope with various shocks and stress.
This would include case management as appropriate, good parenting skills, alternatives to physical discipline methods and access to social cash transfers, amongst other interventions. The
following efforts are recommended:
• Develop comprehensive prevention campaigns using proven techniques to change behaviour at community and household levels, as well as a national level campaign with creative use of
the mass media. • Build resilience of vulnerable families to cope with stress and shocks through improved
parenting programmes and access to social cash transfers, among other interventions and initiatives.
• Examine the role of social cash transfers to reduce some of the poverty-related causes of child abuse, exploitation and violence in order to more effectively target such programmes.
• Ensure effective linkages among professional social workers, para-professional social workers and prevention campaigns and interventions.
• Improve the enforcement Indonesia’s various pieces of protective legislation. • Improve monitoring and cross-agency collaboration to ensure the sharing of information on
vulnerable children both individuals and groups.
5.7 RECOMMENDATION 7: PROMOTING EQUITABLE DEVELOPMENT
FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN - TARGETING INTERVENTIONS ON WORST PERFORMERS TO IMPROVE POVERTY REDUCTION AND
PRO-POOR GROWTH, AND REACH THE MDGS WITH EQUITY
Recommended for: National and local level GoI, UNICEF and other stakeholders
It is clear from Sections 2 and 3 of this report, on the national and provincial indicators of economic growth, poverty levels, human development, health and nutrition, water and sanitation,
and child rights and welfare, that Indonesia has made extensive progress in improving the situation of households and individuals the past 10 years, and is on track to achieving some of
the MDGs. Such achievements are notable given the extraordinary political, economic and fiscal
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overhaul that the country has experienced since the end of the last century - a decade marked by multiple crises both political and economic. Such improvements in the last decade have no
doubt contributed to Indonesia’s recent achievement of ‘lower-middle income’ status in terms of the global rankings. The targeted interventions to protect children, particularly in terms of basic
education and health through social safety net programmes and conditional and other cash transfers to offset rising fuel and rice prices no doubt lessened the impact of both the Asian
financial crisis and the global financial crisis.
5.7.1 MDGs PROGRESS REQUIRING SPECIAL ATTENTION
However, at an aggregate level, several MDGs, particularly in terms of health and nutrition and water and sanitation, require special attention and extensive efforts to improve child welfare.
Selected MDGs requiring the particular attention of agencies working in child welfare include:
• Maternal mortality rates off track • Infant mortality rates per 1,000 births when progress is compared to a 2000 baseline, it is
clear this indicator needs special attention • Rates of children under ive with severe malnutrition needs special attention to reach MDG
• Assisted births by trained health-care workers needs special attention to reach MDG • Number of females 15-49 years using birth control needs special attention to reach MDG
• HIV and AIDS infection rates off track • Proportion of people with access to piped drinking water needs special attention to reach
MDG
5.7.2 DISPARITIES
Despite improvements on an aggregate level, particularly in terms of education, some health and nutrition and water and sanitation outcomes, and the various initiatives outlined in this SITAN, yet
the impacts have been uneven and wide disparities remain among provinces as well as among districts, and between urban and rural areas, income groups, men and women, girls and boys,
and potentially other identity groupings such as ethnicity, which are difficult to analyse due to lack of disaggregated data.
In terms of provincial disparities, the indicators relating to women’s and children’s welfare in some areas are at similar levels to some of the poorest countries in the world and are
particularly low in comparison to neighbouring Asian countries. For example, Indonesia’s national maternal mortality rate, based on 2007 data, is worse than the rate in the Philippines, Sri Lanka,
Bangladesh, Malaysia and Thailand, and the rates for certain eastern provinces like East Nusa Tenggara NTT and Papua are substantially worse than the national average.
Based on the findings in Section 3, several but not all disaster- and conflict-affected provinces still have significant gains to make on some indicators if they are to reach the MDGs, as do many
of the newly formed provinces, especially those located in eastern Indonesia in particular Papua, NTT and NTB. In Section 3, newly formed provinces such as West Sulawesi, Gorontalo and
Jambi repeatedly featured as the worst performers on key indicators, as did the conlict-affected provinces of Maluku, Papua and Central Sulawesi. The problems associated with rural poverty,
informal sector employment and poor access to water and sanitation were also problematic in more densely populated provinces, such as Central Java.
Given the geographic size and large populations of some of these provinces in many cases larger than small countries in Asia and Africa, interventions on the part of national and local
governments, as well as international and local non-government agencies concerned with child welfare, need to continue to strive to ensure that efforts to stimulate growth, alleviate poverty
both income and non-income poverty, and improve child welfare also include initiatives to reduce inequalities and improve equity between groups and regions Indonesia. This is also in line
with the UNICEF’s objective of achieving the MDGs with equity in its new policy directives. Using the Human Rights Based Approach to Development HRBAD that has been adopted by most UN
agencies provides a useful approach with which to focus interventions and efforts on improving child welfare amongst the most vulnerable and disadvantaged groups and regions.
Regional and inter-group inequity in Indonesia is particularly prevalent in terms of: • Health and nutrition disease, maternal and infant mortality rates, nutrition status, food
security, access to medical services and trained medical personnel, hygiene through access to clean water and adequate sanitation, and risk of HIV infection, amongst others.
• Education particularly ECD, junior secondary school education, transition rates and early school leaving rates.
• Child protection although the absence of data makes it dificult to ascertain where the greatest vulnerabilities exist, and what local factors may account for greater levels of violence
in the home and other risks. • Likelihood of disaster affectedness.
• Vulnerability to the spread of HIV and AIDS.
Disparities exist with regard to: • Geographic location provinces, districts, etc.
• Population group - The focus of this report is on the following dimensions since large disparities are associated with each:
o Economic status o Gender
o Age o Ruralurban location
This SITAN has not explored disparities between ethnic, religious, and other identity groupings due to the absence of data. Socio-economic differences and marginalisation or discrimination
may occur along such identity group lines. Other research Stewart, 2008 has demonstrated that belonging to politically or economically marginalised groups particularly politically sensitive
identities can affect access to public services and other resources that may have otherwise improved the welfare of group members. This includes the resources which may improve child
welfare such as health, education, clean water and sanitation, legal aid, child welfare officers, and so on. It can also increase the likelihood of conflict. Religious, ethnic, customary and other
identity groups may be concentrated in geographically isolated areas and this may affect access, or political tensions and power divides may also impact on how resources are allocated, in turn
affecting child welfare. Therefore, this SITAN recommends the collection of data and further analysis of where such disparities may exist, followed by design of targeted interventions to
address these.
As is evident from the more in-depth case studies of four provinces in Section 4, even in those provinces that are performing better overall in terms of the main province-level indicators such
