CLARISSA Cash Plus Social Protection intervention: quantitative and qualitative data

The CLARISSA Cash Plus intervention represented an innovative social protection scheme for tackling social ills, including the worst forms of child labour (WFCL). A universal and unconditional ‘cash plus’ programme, it combined community mobilisation, case work, and cash transfers (CTs). It was implemented in a high-density, low-income neighbourhood in Dhaka to build individual, family, and group capacities to meet needs. This, in turn, was expected to lead to a corresponding decrease in deprivation and community-identified social issues that negatively affect wellbeing, including WFCL. Four principles underpinned the intervention: Unconditionality, Universality, Needs-centred and people-led, and Emergent and open-ended.

The intervention took place in Dhaka – North Gojmohol – over a 27-month period, between October 2021 and December 2023, to test and study the impact of providing unconditional and people‑led support to everyone in a community. Cash transfers were provided between January and June 2023 in monthly instalments, plus one investment transfer in September 2023. A total of 1,573 households received cash, through the Upay mobile financial service. Cash was complemented by a ‘plus’ component, implemented between October 2021 and December 2023. Referred to as relational needs-based community organising (NBCO), a team of 20 community mobilisers (CMs) delivered case work at the individual and family level and community mobilisation at the group level. The intervention was part of the wider CLARISSA programme, led by the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and funded by UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). The intervention was implemented by Terre des hommes (Tdh) in Bangladesh and evaluated in collaboration with the BRAC Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) and researchers from the University of Bath and the Open University, UK.

The evaluation of the CLARISSA Social Protection pilot was rooted in contribution analysis that combined multiple methods over more than three years in line with emerging best practice guidelines for mixed methods research on children, work, and wellbeing. Quantitative research included bi-monthly monitoring surveys administered by the project’s community mobilisers (CMs), including basic questions about wellbeing, perceived economic resilience, school attendance, etc. This was complimented by baseline, midline, and endline surveys, which collected information about key outcome indicators within the sphere of influence of the intervention, such as children’s engagement with different forms of work and working conditions, with schooling and other activities, household living conditions and sources of income, and respondents’ perceptions of change. Qualitative tools were used to probe topics and results of interest, as well as impact pathways. These included reflective diaries written by the community mobilisers; three rounds of focus group discussions (FGDs) with community members; three rounds of key informant interviews (KIIs) with members of case study households; and long-term ethnographic observation.