1 / 8

The Economic and Social Consequences of Family-Based Care

The Economic and Social Consequences of Family-Based Care. Chris Desmond FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Harvard University. Context and consequences. T he vast majority of children in Africa, orphans included, live with family

cadman-carpenter
Download Presentation

The Economic and Social Consequences of Family-Based Care

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Economic and Social Consequences of Family-Based Care Chris Desmond FXB Center for Health and Human Rights Harvard University

  2. Context and consequences • The vast majority of children in Africa, orphans included, live with family • Many families are, however, facing difficult times and this has consequences for children (not just orphans) • Health (mental and physical), education, security, opportunities for the future • Not just limited categories of families (child-headed households, skip-generation etc) • There are also consequences for others • Family, economic and social costs • When children fall out of the family system the impacts may be even greater

  3. Are the consequences inevitable or costs of inaction? • Some are inevitable, but many can be avoided • Children can survive a great deal when appropriately cared for • Steps can be taken to: • Strengthen families (directly and indirectly) • Reintegrate children into the family system • Provide replacement care when other options have failed (never orphanages) • Resources are limited, and how they are allocated needs to be given careful thought

  4. Efficient vs. Cheap • Important to distinguish between efficient and cheap interventions • Need to dispel the idea that children in poor countries are cheap to care for • Difference between marginal and total cost. • All depends on what you consider to be care • What is needed is ways to identify efficient interventions

  5. Identifying efficient responses Production line or cake baking?

  6. THE SAFE Model

  7. Identifying efficient responses • Need to consider the integrated nature of care • One reason why orphanages are not only bad, but inefficient • One reason to be cautiousof CEA results • Need to consider sets of actions to avoid inappropriate conclusions • Need to consider the trade-offs between efficiency and equity • Need to have open discussions: You should only accept the results of economic analysis to the extent to which you agree with the values on which it is based

  8. What to consider? • What constitutes adequate care? • Is the intervention addressing the integrated nature of care? • Does the intervention’s design inappropriately consider the environment fixed? • What are the equity / efficiency trade-offs?

More Related