Final Activity Report
International Policy Fellowship 2002/2003
The Final Phase of the research was more
focussed on the unfolding process of decentralization process in Pakistan and
its potential impacts on Children related social services deliver sector. As no
previous work was available to support this, it was important for the research
to proceed after a compilation of Data and statistics available from different
sources in order to define the scope and magnitude of the reforms that could be
suggested in the final policy paper. Besides, equally significant was
developing an understanding of the contemporary trends and issues in Children
services policies in the target geographical focus of the research. It was
realized that the existing amounts of research done, especially from a
comparative perspective was inadequate and most of the literature was
fragmented. Thereby, my initial efforts were dedicated to allow the process of
data collection, trends evaluation and study of policy guidelines in various
jurisdictions to precede the process of fieldwork and subsequent evaluation.
I attended the IPF Training Seminars in Budapest in October 2002
and March 2003. It was indeed a beneficial experience in terms of having
acquaintance to the IPF working and having an opportunity to meet other fellows
and benefiting from shared and diverse perspectives. The training also provided
me with valuable insight in the social aspects of policy making and
supplemented my existing approach to evaluate remedies for social problems from
a legal perspective. Throughout the research period, I was in active contact
with my Mentors who invaluable advice helped me determine the overall scope of
research and the methodology to be pursued to achieve my objectives.
Through out the
fellowship period, I laid my emphasis on the identifying the areas of concern
and contemporary trends of policy making in the children services sector. This was particularly challenging as the
nature of the project itself carried a multi-pronged
approach to address the policy aspects of Children Services by studying a wider
range of services sectors including Health, Education, Family planning,
Legislation, Labour and Gender issues etc. The major sources of the information
were materials published by the UN agencies, on-line resources, research
journals on policy issues, publications of NGOs in the sectors of Education,
Health, and Child welfare, official policy pronouncements in the field as well
as research databases available in libraries and elsewhere. This
was done by the review of existing literature and research trends on the
subjects and figuring out the possible dimensions that can be addressed by
synthesizing it through an initial round of data collection in the field, that
involves the process of circulating questionnaires.
The focus of the research in the
final stages was on the process of Decentralization in Pakistan and its impact
on the social services delivery, especially those concerning children. The
input in this paper forms a relevant initial direction and would be beneficial
for identifying the problems and key areas of reform in a broader policy
framework for children services in Pakistan in the years to come.
In order to get feedback on certain
issues of policy concerns, a questionnaire was prepared and methodology was
designed to address a horizontal cross section of social sector actors and
stakeholders involved at different levels in influencing the policy making
process. These included the Donor agencies, NGOs involved in children related
work, academics, social workers, community representatives and Govt. officials
at Federal and Provincial levels. The questionnaires were circulated either by
personal interaction, post, email, or as was deemed expedient. Alongside the
questionnaire, another mode of getting feedback was through interviews and
requests for written opinions that could possibly contribute to the theme of
the research. A couple of social
workers, whose relevant experience of field research in the social sector made
the task more efficient and manageable, actively assisted me in the whole
process. The feedback form the questionnaire was slow, but certainly coming in
after being actively pursued. Some of the responses have been very productive
in terms of providing updated versions of trends and helping to narrow the
focus of the study in to specific and at times neglected areas of Children
services sector. The final research
draft has analyzed this feedback and evaluated with the information collected through
the field visits in order to reach for feasible policy
outputs. A comparative outlook for this analysis was also made with similar specialised researches
conducted in the UK on more advances welfare states and other such studies like
the UNICEF MONEE initiative on transitional Central and East European states.
Throughout the research period, I have maintained active contacts and have co-ordinated with various significant international institutions that were involved in the contributing to the research in this field. I visited some important institutions in the UK working on issues related to Social policy and child welfare and have collected observations and data on many ongoing initiatives. To evaluate actual on the ground situation, I conducted extensive research visits across Pakistan’s major cities. These visits were beneficial in terms of acquisition of rich reference materials brought along from the research database in the libraries. I also managed to introduce the nature of my research and had detailed discussions with experts who were willing to co-operate and contribute to my study through maintaining active interaction over the next year. I believe that the formation of such a network can be productive not only for this research but also in terms of any future OSI/IPF initiative in the Children services policy area.
Currently,
I am working in close collaboration with UNICEF Pakistan to build-up on the
output of the fellowship. I am
planning to publish my papers soon in a documented form and intend to present
the outcome of this research at a relevant international forum/conference to
invite some feedback and provide information on the significance of this
research in the relevant academic and policy circles.