The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the social policy weaknesses of the devolved units of government as well as the absence of a coherent core across the different social development programmes of the National Government. For instance, the different social protection instruments implemented by the National Government but consumed at counties did not demonstrate a coordinated flow to be rapidly marshaled and deployed to address the pandemic-related crises. They were also exposed for their simplicity in the face of complexity – their constitutive assumption the only support vulnerable groups need is money. This leads us to pose two related questions. First what is the Country’s social policy? Second, do the counties have social policies?
For conceptual clarity, social policy refers to governmental and legislative efforts, mechanisms, and instruments aimed at initiating, implementing, and monitoring changes to transform and benefit the entire society or particular segments seen to be ‘missing out’. In a sense, it is a social intervention targeting structural social problems (Kazdin, 2001). In most cases, poverty and its resultant vulnerabilities including social, economic, and political marginalization are the automatic targets of a social policy and often form a core constituent element of most social policies. Often the content, orientation and instruments of tackling poverty and resultant forms of peripheralization reflect the content, orientation, and choices of the social policy. Thus social policy is also a reflection of broader government public policy, its framework and ideological choice for social transformation (development in common parlance).
Read Dr. Justus Aungo’s full article on the Research and Innovation Blog,https://uonresearch.org/blog/social-planning-and-devolution-counties-need-coherent-social-policies/
