What do social protection systems need to look like to promote inclusion, autonomy and participation for people with disabilities?
Cash transfers are certainly important to meet basic living costs, as well the ‘extra’ costs that people with disabilities often need to pay just to access essential services. However, people with disabilities also have high needs for healthcare, assistive devices, and extra support to go to school or be employed. Traditional models of social protection that assume incapacity or poverty as prerequisites for receiving assistance may not be well designed to support persons with disabilities to achieve full and effective participation in public life.
In today’s episode, we’re featuring case studies on disability-inclusive social protection systems from Fiji and Thailand that bring cash and complementary programmes together to help achieve this goal.
Our guests for this episode are:
Joshco Wakaniyasi, Programme Manager, Pacific Disability Forum, Fiji
Phatcharamonth Pitipanyakul, Director, Division of Rights and Welfare of Persons with Disabilities at the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, Thailand
Alexandre Cote, Disability and Social Protection Policy Specialist, UNICEF

Alexandre Cote also contributed to our monthly segment of ‘Quick Wins’, which highlights news, achievements and research that have shaped recent developments and sparked our interest.
 
Resources:
Conference: Disability - Social Protection - Inclusion: Dialogue for change
Webinar: Social protection and community support system for inclusion of persons with disabilities
Practitioner Note 1: Inclusive targeting, identification and registration
socialprotection.org Satisfaction Survey 2022