Building inclusive social assistance in Indonesia

In the past two decades, Indonesia has significantly addressed some of its development challenges. Nearly 68 million people in Indonesia remain near-poor and are vulnerable to fall into poverty, however. To address this, the Indonesian government is implementing a range of social assistance programmes for the near-poor population group.

Programme Keluarga Harapan (PKH), or Family Hope Programme, is Indonesia’s flagship conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme.  It has covered 34 provinces reaching almost 10 million beneficiaries, and thus making it the third largest CCT scheme globally. PKH is managed by the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) in collaboration with other institutions, such as, the National Team for the Acceleration of Poverty Reduction (TNP2K), and the Ministry of National Development Planning (BAPPENAS).

We provide support to the Ministry of Social Affairs (MOSA) and the Directorate of Family Social Security (Jaminan Sosial Keluarga or JSK) within MOSA to improve the capacity of programme implementers and enhance analytical, communication and advocacy skills of the PKH staff. Additionally, the assignment will also provide support to Programme Sembako, Indonesia’s non-cash Food Assistance Programme.

The Challenge

The PKH programme aims to reduce vulnerability by increasing household investment in health and education. However, the programme implementation faces many challenges. Based on a study conducted by the World Bank on Indonesia’s social assistance system in 2017, four main challenges were identified in PKH implementation:

• unequal coverage,
• low benefit level,
• inadequate training and support to field workers, and
• limited coordination with health and education service providers.

Moreover, limitations in information dissemination and understanding of the programme among the implementers and inadequate facilitation by the programme management has also affected the achievement of the desired target.

In order to address these challenges, MOSA has to strengthen its implementation capacity by upgrading information technology systems, improving human resources management, ensuring adequate training of facilitators, and scaling up family development sessions to all PKH families.

We are providing support to MOSA (specifically the Directorate of Family Social Security, JSK) as the main implementer of PKH, and the Directorate General of PFM as the main implementer of Programme Sembako), to achieve two main outputs:

• improve the capacity of selected PKH and Sembako Programme implementers , and
• enhance the analytical, communication, and advocacy skills of PKH and Sembako Programme staff.

Our Approach 

Implementation of this project is divided into five phases with each comprised of focused steps and targets to the intended deliverables and contribute to the achievement of the two main outputs mentioned above. The five phases are:

• Phase I – Inception and Initial Assessment
• Phase II – Review and Assessment
• Phase III – Strategy and Plans Development
• Phase IV – Strategy Implementation
• Phase V – Project Completion and Reporting

In order to tailor the need for capacity development for MOSA and JSK staff, we assessed functions of JSK and other relevant units in MOSA responsible for PKH and Sembako Program implementation, particularly in human resource capacity and communication-related practices. Results from this assessment guided us to develop a bespoke capacity building plan and suggest improvements in the communication strategy.

 Outcomes and wider impacts

Initial findings showed that the capacity of the implementing entity to support implementation work needs to be built to keep up with the growth of programme activities. There are administrative pressures in meeting the objectives on targeted programme expansion both at local and national level. This is reflected from widespread recruitment problems, administrative constraints due to inadequate number of staff and conflicting employment terms, and fragmented technical training.

On the communication and advocacy front, there are challenges including inadequate numbers of communication staff, undefined job titles, roles and responsibilities, and insufficient skill-sets of existing staff. The existing PKH communication strategy has also not been implemented fully and there is no demonstrated evidence of a strategically planned communication method to support effective policy advocacy.

It is expected that our assignment will deliver capacity building, communication and advocacy training, and mechanisms that enhance the capacities of PKH and Sembako Programme implementers to adopt good programming practices that enables them to benefit a wider section of the community.