Child Safeguarding for Cash and Voucher Assistance Guidance

As cash and voucher assistance (CVA) becomes ever more prevalent, it is more important than ever for humanitarian and development actors to act to prevent and mitigate associated child safeguarding risks.
Children are particularly vulnerable, and even more so in emergencies. The impact of CVA on children’s well-being must, therefore, be considered at all stages of the project cycle and in all CVA, irrespective of the sector in which it is being used.
This guidance enables users to make CVA more accountable to children, by providing guidance on how to identify, prevent, and respond to child safeguarding incidents more effectively. It covers the full programme cycle:
• Preparedness
• Situation and response analysis
• Design
• Implementation
• Monitoring, evaluation and learning
• Handover and close out.

Key points about this tool:
• This tool covers all forms of CVA: conditional and unconditional,
cash grants and vouchers.
• While this tool applies specifically to emergency settings, it’s also applicable to non-emergency settings.
• Where child safeguarding and protection specialists are available, this tool does not replace the need to seek their advice on context-specific issues that you may encounter.

This is an update to the 2012 ‘Child Safeguarding in Cash Transfer Programming: A Practical Tool’.