Recovery, Renewal, Resilience

The significant impacts of COVID-19 have created new groups of vulnerable people, such as people on middle-incomes and small businesses owners who have experienced a sudden loss of income and are now financially vulnerable. These new vulnerable groups have not before been targeted for social protection. Consider how other countries have expanded existing systems to support newly vulnerable people, for example:

• Adjust social protection programmes to give flexibility that can adjust to changing public health situations:
  • Directly link social protection measures to region-specific health or lockdown measures, e.g. tie social protection policies to tiers/categories in health responses
  • Establish a trigger system to rapidly adjust social protection measures to affected areas and groups
• Enable vulnerable people to access the assistance they need:
  • Establish a beneficiary database to identify and assess the social protection needs of newly vulnerable people
  • Partner with existing community organisations to identify vulnerable people, develop community-based targeting, and ensure those who become newly vulnerable are not excluded
  • Facilitate vulnerable individuals to self-identify through a registration service, e.g. online application, supported by a means test for verification
  • Expand sources of data to identify and verify intended beneficiaries, e.g. electricity or bank account data, employer’s redundancy data
• Revise legislation surrounding conditionality requirements, e.g. loosening conditionality principles of social protection programmes:
  • Morocco transformed ‘conditional cash transfer’ (CCTs) to ‘labelled cash transfer’ (LTCs) by removing the conditionality of continued school enrolment for cash transfers - resulting in reduced costs of programme implementation and reported increases in school enrolment and participation of children

Local government should assess the health seeking behaviours of certain populations within their community. Health seeking behaviours will impact the success of disease suppression as behaviours impact access and understanding of public health measures (lessons from influenza A/H5N1 and 'swine influenza' A/H1N1).