Technical Assistance to the Social Protection Policies and Employment in the Framework of Activities of Social Policies of the EUROsociAL+ Programme

The contract provides highly specialized services to support the identified and planned actions that respond to the needs of 18 partner countries, both at nationally and regionally level. The activities are articulated around four main lines of work, aimed at strengthening and innovating social protection systems both at the level of architecture and institutional governance and through the strengthening of programs:

i) Active employment policies. This line of action focuses mainly on strengthening labor market policies, directing its actions in the employment services and on the policy that combines and integrates training and work. This line also includes policies for the labour inclusion of women, youth, people with disabilities and migrant’s workers.

ii) Social inclusion policies and the fight against poverty. This line includes actions aimed at strengthening socio-assistance programmes (especially in the fight against poverty) and for disadvantaged groups.

iii) Policies for youth, adolescence and childhood. In this area, policies aimed at the development of children and adolescents (NNA) and young people are supported in the understanding that investment, in this population group, generates positive impacts that will be effective until people’s adulthood, also resulting in an increase in productivity, reducing losses in human development and contributing to breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty and gender discrimination. Special attention is dedicated to children in any vulnerable condition, at risk of dropping out of school and in migratory status.

iv) Care policies. This line includes actions that express the most recent trend in the region to develop public policies to increase (or create, in some cases) care services. Although the differences between countries is quite marked, in general, the configuration of a “care” pillar within social protection systems is imposed as a majority guideline, targeting 4 groups historically excluded from them: early childhood, older adults, people with disabilities and carers (who are almost exclusively women, as it is the extension of care given free of charge traditionally by them). In this line, the gender perspective is present at all levels, since by alleviating unpaid care tasks within families, the aim is to increase the opportunities for paid work for women and also to improve working conditions and the mix of trades related to care.