A meeting on UNICEF’s Social Policy and Social Security Action Plan for the period 2025-2027 has been chaired by the Development Commissioner–cum-Additional Chief Secretary to Government, Odisha Smt. Anu Garg, IAS at the Conference Hall of Lokseva Bhawan, Bhubaneswar on 8th April, 2025, Tuesday.
The meeting was attended by the Principal Secretary, W& CD Department, Smt. Shubha Sharma, Principal Secretary, Finance, Shri Saswata Mishra, Commissioner–cum-Secretary, SSEPD, Shri R.S.Gopalan, Special Secretary, Planning and Convergence Department Shri T. Ao, Additional Secretary of the Department Shri Manish Agarwal, State Disability Commissioner Smt. Bratati Harichandan, Census Director Shri U.N. Das and other senior officials of different stakeholder departments of the Government of Odisha. Dr. Sugata Roy, Social and Behaviour Change Specialist, Dr. Bal Paritosh Dash, Social Policy Specialist and Shri Ajay Kumar Singh, Consultant from UNICEF made the presentation on the Social Policy and Social Security Action Plan.
At the outset, the Special Secretary, P&C outlined the SPSP interventions as a multi-year work plan of UNICEF with the objective “By 2027, children, adolescents and women, especially the most vulnerable, access and benefit from gender-responsive, climate adaptive and shock responsive social and economic policies, and programmes on social protection.” The program started in 2023 and contains various Goals and Objectives for the year 2027.
Sri Singh, Social Policy Consultant, UNICEF outlined the SPSP outputs/ strategic areas of interventions of UNICEF such as Child Development and Socio-Economic Measurement and Analysis, Public Finance for Children, Social Protection & Strengthening Local Governance and highlighted the key activities completed during the year 2023-24.
Dr Dash, Social Policy Specialist, UNICEF, Chhattisgarh presented the SPSP Workplan for 2025-2027 and the role of UNICEF in each of these activities.
UNICEF will collaborate with state-level technical institutions (NIT, Rourkela) to develop child poverty and deprivation analysis. They will also collaborate with the Finance Department to ensure annual publications of child, nutrition, SDG and gender budget statements and their increased use in the form of decision-making. Engagement with the Finance and SSE&PD Department to build an Approach Paper on Disability Financing targeted towards Universal Coverage of Cash Transfers to people with disabilities and Develop policy brief and engage around consultations for SDG based outcome budgeting including climate change and disability is also their potential area of partnership.
In collaboration with P&C Department, UNICEF will undertake community-based assessments to examine the access to social protection schemes by PWDs/CWDs and identify barriers and enablers. UNICEF, Odisha has been working on local decentralization in rural areas during the last country cycle, which needs to further enhance. In partnership with SIRD&PR, the GPs will be tasked to plan and implement interventions contributing to the achievement of SDGs, using the untied funds.
While UNICEF has supported SDG-based budgeting process and prepared 912 child-friendly GPDP for 2024-25, it was decided to subsequently to expand the analysis to all 6,794 GPs of the State. UNICEF will also support in capacity building of 1,945 newly appointed Panchayat Extension Officers on child-friendly and women-friendly Gram Panchayats and issues related to female elected representatives.
Upon reviewing the Work Plan, the Development Commissioner-cum-Additional Chief Secretary, Smt. Garg, recommended the inclusion of pertinent proposals from relevant departments. Furthermore, she assured the State Government’s ongoing support and collaboration with UNICEF’s planned programmes across diverse sectors.
