Changing Societal Attitudes
on Alternative Care in Cambodia
UNICEF-Penn Summer Programme on Advancing
Social Norms
Jolanda van Westering
Introduction
• Social norm of family and community based care for
children
• Normative and empirical expectations in place –
activated in scripts on child care
• Norm held up by rewards and sanctions
• Rapid increase in residential care (65% increase of
institutionalized children in three years)
• 55% of children in residential care are not orphans
What lies underneath
• Institutionalization is harmful to children
• Agenda of orphanages – proselytization and
change of moral and social norms
• Enabling environment set in recent social
history of Cambodia
Values Matter
Values alone?
• Placement based on value of wanting what is
best for one’s child
• However, children are not happy, parents are
not happy, care does not meet the standards
and educational opportunities are rarely
better
What is happening here?
Role of Market Norms
• Erosion of social norm under the influence of
market norms and incentives
• Market norms reconfigure existing social norm
and shift expectations around alternative care
for children
• “when a social norm is trumped by a market
norm, it will rarely return” (Daniel Ariely)
Basic Values under Attack
• External incentives/rewards change scripts for
practices that were previously based on internal
incentives (compassion, social approval)
• New incentives redefine values on well-being of
children and ensuring best possible care for
children
• They are shifting expectations of people
changing norms that inform behaviour
• Belief systems and new expectations are brought
in line – coherence theory
Divorces and Dilemmas
• Divorce or disharmony between legal, moral
and social norms
• Influence of culture – practice in Cambodia
mostly based on moral and social norms
rather than legal norms
• New incentives create new motivators and
emotions
• Social dilemma?
What have we done so far?
Evaluation of Current Strategies
• Research to generate evidence for programming
– Did not address expectations that underlie attitudes
– Focused on selected target groups – not donors
– Did not look at social networks that help shape
attitudes and behaviors
• Partnership building around AC
• Building systems that support social norms
change
• Advocacy and communications strategy
Change in Strategies
• Re-categorizing values to change the scripts that
are activated on alternative care
• Place values in a child rights context
• Messaging should reinforce a coherent belief
system
• Placing social norms change on alternative care in
a social protection context that supports family
preservation
• Addressing underlying social exclusion and
vulnerability - equity
Change in Strategies cont’d
• Engaging communities to build local
ownership
• Focus advocacy and communications on social
networks – key influencers
• Diffusion of knowledge towards changing
expectations
• Partnerships to reach donors and church
groups that fund and maintain residential care
Opportunities and Challenges
• New CP 2011-2015 – IR on social change in
child protection provides opportunity
• National Social Protection Strategy under
development
• Decreasing funding
• Rallying colleagues and counterparts around
social norms change as key strategy –
conceptual framework is needed.
THANK YOU