Guidance | A Brief Guide: Selecting Child Protection Minimum Standards Indicators for Application in Programs, Projects or Humanitarian Response Plans

This guidance document provides information on the Child Protection Minimum Standards (CPMS) measurement framework.

Traditionally, accountability measures in Child Protection in Humanitarian Action (CPHA) have focused on meeting output benchmarks (such as number of people trained, number of community awareness campaigns carried out, or number referrals to service providers made), rather than demonstrating outcomes or experiences of the population (such as the percent of children that received response services who report satisfaction with the service provision or the percent of children who report improve- ment in their mental health following program completion). While output level indicators are necessary, it is critical for the CPHA sector to move towards measuring activities at the outcome-level to determine whether change has been achieved. Doing so will lead to strengthened accountability towards children, families, and communities.

With this goal in mind, the CPMS indicators were updated and revised in 2019 to include predominantly outcome-level indicators that seek to measure the effectiveness of child protection practices and programs.

Therefore, this guidance note will support humanitarian actors to select, modify and contextualize indicators so that they can be used to measure progress towards meeting the minimum standards. Measuring progress towards the standards will allow actors to determine ‘what works’ and ‘what does not’. This will enable humanitarian actors to continually improve the child protection response to better serve children, families and communities.