Technical Assistance to Social Welfare II in Georgia

Project

Social protection and decent work
Health

Project start date: September 1 2021

Status
Closed
Project end date: July 31 2021
Financing amount (Euro): 0,27 M€
Country and region: Georgia

This project helps the different state actors involved in social protection to organize and implement the inception phase of the Social Code development.

The Ministry of Internally Displaced Persons from Occupied Territory, Health, Labour and Social Affairs (MoIHLSA) of Georgia announced the launch of the Social Code development process in order to consolidate the gaps analysis and recommendations made by different donors and initiatives, and to explore new ways of bridging them through best practices from European social protection models.

At the moment, different Ministries and agencies are involved in providing social protection services and benefits (mostly the Social Services Agency, State Care Agency, and Pension Agency). These fragmented parts of social protection divided in distinct legislation make it challenging to govern, monitor and update practitioners, stakeholders and legal entities on the latest changes and legislation regarding social protection. No legislative document aggregates holistically the different rights, processes and financing mechanisms of social protection.

Supporting the Elaboration of the Social Code

"As the current social system fails to provide adequate support at all stages of human life, large-scale legislative reform will be based on sharing the experience of successful countries”, declared the Healthand Social Affairs Minister Ekaterine Tikaradze.

The AFD has announced that it will support the Social Code Development process through the inception phase, through a technical assistance implemented by Expertise France. The Delegation of the European Union will also award Expertise France a grant, through one of the component of the project “Strengthen Social Protection in Georgia”. The European Union will support the development of the Social Code through the valorisation of European experiences of social protection and their financing as well as the coordination of donors in supporting MoIHLSA and social protection reforms. It should be noted however that the EU-funded project cannot cover all the activities leading to the elaboration of the social code.

The AFD-funded project is therefore a support to the inception phase of the “Elaboration of the Social Code of Georgia”: the preparatory works will be carried out, in order to prepare for the elaboration of the Social Code legislative initiatives. The AFD-funded project activities involve :

• Consolidation on gap assessments and recommendations
• Coordination processes (partners, decision makers, stakeholders and Parliament)
• Development of the overall roadmap for Social Code Development
• Communication and consultation mechanisms

Find out more about the global project to strengthen social protection in Georgia

Disabilities and child mental health

In addition, this project carry on the work of the previous project on social protection in Georgia “Technical Assistance to Social Welfare” funded by the Agence Française de Développement and implemented by Expertise France from April 2019 to June 2021. The previous project worked on themes such as disability, mental health, health and performance-based contracting, support to internally displaced persons (IDP), employment activation and social support in response to COVID-19 crisis.

This new loan from the Agence Française de Développement will also serve to continue actions on disability and child mental health started in the previous project. Besides supporting the development of Georgia Social Code, the project will include :

• Preparation of disability assessment pilot on children in Samagrelo-Svaneti in cooperation with the Georgian Association of Social Workers (GASW), the local municipalities and the health centres
• Implementation of mental health survey on children in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and the UNICEF.