Building social protection to reduce risks related to developmental and life-cycle vulnerabilities is crucial, particularly in developing country contexts. This is increasingly reflected in the focus on child health, education and nutrition in social transfer programmes globally and in the child-sensitive focus of many of the Millennium Development Goals.

Social protection strategies and policy frameworks have, however, to a great extent neglected the social sources of risk in the context of high rates of poverty and vulnerability. In Nigeria, where child protection issues are a key concern, important gaps exist in relation to national policy on social assistance provision for vulnerable children: although child protection is one of four key pillars of the national social protection strategy, the strategy is poorly resourced and implemented.

Accordingly this report is informed by a transformative social protection conceptual framework which aims to identify policy and programming gaps and offer recommendations on how the country can implement its national development and social protection strategies to be more responsive to children’s protection vulnerabilities.

Drawing on secondary literature along with primary qualitative data collected from four state-level sites (Adamawa, Benue, Edo and Lagos) the report focuses on linkages between child protection and social protection services regarding three key child protection deficits: child trafficking; harmful forms of child labour; and child domestic abuse. These three issues were selected on account of the international evidence base documenting linkages between social protection initiatives and these child protection deprivations.