To what extent might social policy promote children's well-being? (Essay Sample)

To What Extent Might Social Policy Promote Children’s Wellbeing?
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To What Extent Might Social Policy Promote Children’s Wellbeing?
Introduction
Social policy is a government or societies’ program concerning actions that directly impact citizens' welfare by offering them income or services. Therefore, the fundamental core incorporates national (public) assistance, social insurance, housing polity, welfare, and health services, amongst others. Social policy can also be described as a tool utilized by social institutions and governments to influence or shape citizens’ behavioral inclinations or an avenue towards attaining particular targets. Although the social policy is important to all people, it is specifically essential for children since it molds the environment within which they and their families work, play, and live, thus impacting their wellbeing. Accordingly, this is because an individual’s foundation is laid during childhood. Social policy improves children's well-being by securing their healthy nutrition, eliminating barriers to maternal and childhood health, reducing childhood poverty, securing their participation in political and public spheres, improving their capabilities and development, improving their health outcomes, and eliminating childhood vulnerabilities, and enhancing access to quality education.
Discussion
Cash transfer programs, coupled with other complementary services, play a critical role in reducing children's stunting. Despite the strong connection between cash transfer program absence and food insecurity and deprived dietary diversity – which are core undernutrition drivers – cash transfer implications on nutrition, including stunting, are relatively less explicit (Manley, Gitter & Slavchevska, 2013). However, studies in Colombia, Nicaragua, and Mexico have suggested that provisional cash transfers, coupled with supplemental dieting, reduce stunting in children, thus improving their wellbeing (Ranganathan & Lagarde, 2012). Simultaneously, this research indicates that nutrition determinants are multifaceted (de Groot et al., 2017), as well as that cash transfers solely rarely lowers chronic malnutrition and stunting, reiterating that complementary and integrated services are increasingly relevant.