Over the past 3 years, Greece was one of the four EU countries (alongside Bulgaria, Croatia and Italy) that introduced innovative models of services to transform child protection as part of the EU Child Guarantee pilot scheme. The Child Guarantee, launched in the EU in 2019, aspires to tackle child poverty and social exclusion through providing free access to education, healthcare and childcare, and ensuring decent housing and adequate nutrition.

Commissioned by the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Alma Economics researchers in Athens conducted extensive operational research into the implementation of the pilot’s key innovative models. For Greece, these included:

1. Supporting deinstitutionalisation and community-based care,

2. Strengthening the foster care system,

3. Introducing supported independent living,

4. Investing in life skills and job readiness for vulnerable youth, and

5. Strengthening inclusive education.

We talked to implementing partners, frontline and administrative staff of statutory organisations, as well as other programme and government officials about their experiences from the different stages of the pilot and how well these address child poverty and social exclusion in the country. In our interviews, we touched on different stages of the pilot for the interventions organised under each model, from preparation and planning to implementation and participation, and further discussed the sustainability and scalability of models going forward.

UNICEF has now published its synthesis report compiling research findings from all four pilot countries. We are very happy to see included in the report the important lessons learned from the Greek pilot which can contribute to the future expansion of the Child Guarantee across the EU.

➥ You can read the UNICEF synthesis report here.