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Knowledge of: • The latest development of national lawsregulationsguidelines.
• How to interpret national instrumentsstrategiesprogrammes and translate them locally, even
when local coordination mechanisms and the political will exists. • How to interpret national level regulations, principles and ideas into local dialects mismatch
between national language and local dialects. • How to create a local enabling regulatory environment - e.g., draft local regulationsdraft
guidelines or a complete absence of regulations based on lack of political will to create these.
• How to do child budgeting. • How to socialisemainstream guidelinesprogrammesplans.
• How to create awareness in communities about key issues and stimulate behavioural change.
Insufficient capacity of: • Local mainly districtmunicipal human resources in terms of technical capacity, knowledge
and adequate numbers required to implement initiatives. • Absent or weak e.g., newly formed Bureau of Women’s Empowerment and Child
Protection and thus absent or weak coordination of sectoral agencies providing services and programmes affecting children.
Data and monitoring: • Absent or weak local level data collection and monitoring systems relating to child rights,
protection and welfare, and programmeservice impact and outreach. An absence of political will and budget commitment:
• ln some areas to prioritise children in policies and budgeting. • To create an enabling regulatory environment time delays were also a problem.
• To prioritise the outcomes of needs, priorities, ideas, and innovations from the consultative
planning processes musrenbang at the village and sub-district levels for district level development planning and the district level for provincial level development planning.
Coordination: • Poor coordination between oficesagencies and between levels of government, sometimes
replicating initiatives, sometimes complicating initiatives. • Competition between oficesagencies for key tasks and functions and associated budgets
and year to year transfer between officesagencies. The voices of children, women and practitioners:
• An absence or weak presence of the voices of children, women and child-focused practitioners in the musrenbang; in many regions musrenbang processes continue to be
dominated by elite views. • Mismatch between children’s and women’s needs articulation processes through
musrenbang and strategic plans and actual policies implemented, as these are often dominated by political priorities or elite views.
Partnership: • Weak government-CSO partnerships and pro-child initiatives in some cases; where
government-CSO partnerships was stronger there were indications of improvements in service delivery.
Improving the system of development planning, policymaking and service delivery is particularly difficult when resource constraints are coupled with weak local capacity, as in the case of many
of the provinces in eastern Indonesia, such as NTT. In these cases, the bulk of the local budgets around three quarters provided for by the national government in the general allocation
fund DAU are required for operational costs particularly civil service wages, and the special allocation fund DAK is in most cases reserved for infrastructure development, based on
directives from the Ministry of Finance. This limits the extent to which the central government can earmark and distribute funds for special local level needs relating to children and ensure that
they reach beneficiaries, as there are limited guarantees that funding distributed through the DAU to improve the situation of children will not be used for other priorities. Distributing such funds
through line ministry projects is also made more difficult in the decentralised contexts as the process of increasing the absorption capacity is ongoing. In the poorer provinces and districts in
Indonesia, children’s needs are competing with infrastructure development and other priorities. Revising the national regulatory framework to allow for DAK funds to be distributed for non-
infrastructure costs related to child needs may go some way to at least increasing the resource base for poorer areas and creating the political will for prioritizing children’s needs.
There are also, however, the deconcentration funds, which the provincial governments can used to promote coordination and improve inter-district disparities, particularly in multi-
sectoral approaches for knowledge management, training and capacity building at the district level, to improve child rights and welfare. However, the provinces have limited scope for direct
programme implementation in most regions with the exception of Special Autonomy provinces, and therefore greater attention needs to be given to gaining the commitment of district level
governments and leadership to implement provincial goals and funded initiatives. Working with the provincial government in coordination and knowledge management is a key recommendation
of this SITAN for donors and other stakeholders possessing the technical and programming knowledge to improve child welfare.
5.8.2 LEARNING FROM INNOVATIONS
In spite of the challenges, Section 4 demonstrated how attention to child welfare and rights could be improved through initiatives and innovations within districts. Some key findings that are
relevant for the GoI include:
• For service delivery and programmes to have an impact they need to be enacted at the district level in most provinces and at both the provincial and district level in provinces with Special
Autonomy. • Effective interventions required:
o A clear provincial and district regulatory framework that was aligned with strategic plans, annual work-plans, consultative planning forum priorities, budgets, technical guidelines
and programmes. o The political will of the district and provincial leadership to create a pro-child policy and
regulatory framework, as well as to earmark budgets for child needs see, for example, the case of the Child-Friendly City in Surakarta, Section 4.5.
o The creation of special working groups and task forces with a strong mandate from the governor at the provincial level or the district headmayor at the local level, together
with the support of parliament and enacted through local regulations and decrees and sufficient budget to act. Sectoral and multi-sectoral task forces that include both
government and non-government initiatives, resources and expertise were key to
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improving child welfare see, for example, the marked educational improvements in Aceh, the improving approaches to protecting children on the streets in Central Java, and to
some extent the interventions on health and nutrition in NTT.
o Partnerships between CSOs and government can work to improve service delivery. CSO involvement in policymaking was key in terms of understanding child needs and
vulnerabilities and how to address these see, for example, HIV prevention and care initiatives in Papua. They were also filling the gaps provided in public service delivery
as the system strengthens under-decentralisation. However, in many cases partnerships between district government and CSOs needed to be strengthened.
o Coordination between provincial and districtmunicipal governments, and between offices agenciesbureaus working in child welfare.
• The situation of women and children in the decentralised context improved when the relevant regulations were enacted with supporting technical guidelines and advocacy to government
sectoral agencies and units, especially when these included ideas on how to protect child rights and manage cases particularly in situations involving children in conflict with the law.
• Partnership between government and donors and other local and international organisations with specific knowledge sets was required for technical skills building, knowledge building,
coordination, and programming to address some of the more dire situations in child welfare in each provincial case study.
• Children have important knowledge of how vulnerabilities develop, how to address these, and the kind of assistance they might need to complement their own coping strategies and
development. They can also disseminate new knowledge and practices to other children. • To reduce some inequities further material resources were required, but under
decentralisation these could be targeted very specifically at district and sectoral needs, which may not have been the case previously see, for example, the case of health and nutrition in
NTT.
To strengthen the capacity of local governments to create pro-child policies and to work with local partners to deliver services to reduce vulnerabilities for children, improve child welfare,
and protect child rights, this SITAN recommends the following strategies for donors and other agencies with technical skills and knowledge in sectors related to child welfare. Most supporting
initiatives and interventions should be targeted at districts, but for cross-sectoral issues, knowledge management and data collection, interventions should be targeted at both the district
and provincial levels. For particularly difficult situations where the province is in a far worse situation than other provinces in terms of child welfare for example, maternal and child mortality
rates in NTT, then both districts and provinces should be targeted sectorally in the initiatives to improve these situations. The recommendations include:
a Providing technical assistance and capacity to provincial and district governments to establish KCCs and to provide the relevant training. These KCCs should be coordinated by
the province, which should also feed data upwards to the national level, as well as translate national guidelinesregulations and policies to the district level.
b In collaboration with KCCs, support the establishment and the technicalknowledge capacity building of multi-stakeholder pro-child district task forces made up of government staff,
practitioners, CSOs, and children, which focus on improving the relevant inequities in each district relating to child welfare. These task forces should be sectoral or multi-sectoral, as
necessary, and should work to ensure that the district and sectoral office strategic plans and work-plans, budgets and programmes are pro-child and pro-women. They should also to
ensure minimum service standards are upheld in line with national regulations. c Providing direct capacity building assistance, particularly to district governments, BAPPEDA
and the multi-stakeholder task forces, to strengthen the bottom-up musrenbang processes to better include the voices of women, children and practitioners. Task force members
can assist childrencommunitiesfamilies to identify and articulate their needs and attend musrenbang meetings with community representatives to ensure that these needs are voiced
in musrenbang forums. They can also monitor resulting policies for impacts.
d Providing capacity building and technical assistance to district and provincial governments potentially through KCCs in translating musrenbang and other pro-child priorities into
development planning, particularly the formulation of district strategic plans Renstra, regulations Perda, policies, budgets, and sectoral and unit annual work-plans and guidelines
on service delivery.
e Work with local governments to plan the establishment of minimum service standards at the local level.
f Providing technical assistance to district and provincial governments to establish or strengthen the Bureau of Women’s Empowerment and Child Protection and improve
monitoring systems, coordination and referrals of vulnerable children between agencies. g Promote partnerships among government agencies, the private sector and CSOs.
5.9 RECOMMENDATION 9: ADVOCATING THE SCALE UP OF SPECIFIC
SECTORAL INTERVENTIONS TO IMPROVE CHILD RIGHTS AND WELFARE AND REDUCE INEQUITY
Recommended for: National and sub-national GoI, with the support of UNICEF and other stakeholders
Aside from the efforts mentioned above to reduce disparities between groups and regions overall, there are some specific issues which require further targeted interventions, either sectorally or
multi-sectorally, based on the findings in this SITAN. These should be implemented together with Recommendation 7 on also targeting the worst performers and disadvantaged groups. These
should be integrated into the approach outlined above for working in the decentralised context in Recommendation 8.
5.9.1 GENERAL FOR ALL STAKEHOLDERS
In order to effectively advocate for and implement the recommendations outlined below, this SITAN recommends that all sectors conduct the following in the regions where the interventions
are targeted:
• Conduct district and provincial level SITAN to: o identify the cultural and family practices which:
• discourage childrenparents from prioritizing education • currently contribute to poor young child survival, growth and development
• currently contribute to poor knowledge of children’s and women’s rights including the
use of violence in the home and community and alternative non-violent practices of discipline
