Cagayan de Oro City — The Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) will validate starting today the 44,129 potential grantees of the extended age coverage of Pantawid Pamilyang Pilipino Program (Pantawid Pamilya) in Northern Mindanao.
The potential grantees are former beneficiaries of Pantawid Pamilya coming from the five provinces of the region who became ineligible of the program after reaching the age of 15 or above.
The extended age coverage program of DSWD for former grantees of Pantawid Pamilya aims to go beyond the five-year limit to cover up to high school education; to extend the age coverage up to eighteen (18) years of age, taking into account the K-12 program of the Department of Education; to provide a higher grant amount of P500 per child in high school; to remove the health grant for households who have been in the program for more than 60 months or 5 years; and to maintain the limit of three child beneficiaries per household.
Currently, Pantawid Pamilya provides education grants covering children age 3-14 at the start of the school year.
The validation is part of the implementing rules and regulations set and approved by the National Advisory Committee, the highest policy-making inter-agency body of Pantawid Pamilya, for the extended age coverage program.
In its resolution number 12, series of 2013, NAC recognizes the need to extend support to the child beneficiaries to further pursue the rights of children and enable the program to contribute to the end of the inter-generational cycle of poverty.
”Pantawid Pamilya promotes human capital accumulation by incentivizing the children’s capacity to stay in school. The accumulation of human capital is necessary to break the transmission of inter-generational poverty and to make growth more inclusive,” the resolution said, adding that “Pantawid Pamilya incentivizes school enrollment and consistent attendance by supplementing the household income to cover for the direct and indirect costs of schooling.”
Pantawid Pamilya has been demonstrated to be effective in promoting enrollment in children in this age range and keeping them in school. However, analysis also demonstrates that the program is not able to increase enrollment among children older than this age range.
“The combination of a sizable (roughly 4-10 percentage point) increase in enrollment at ages 3-14 that disappears at ages above the current Pantawid Pamilya cut-off of age 14 has been demonstrated via both the 1st Wave Impact Evaluation of the Program reported in (Chaudhury, Friedman, & Onishi, 2013) as well as complementary analysis of an independent data set, the 2011 Annual Poverty Indicator Survey (APIS), as reported in Paqueo, Orbeta, Castaneda, & Spohr (2013).
“Dropout of Pantawid Pamilya child beneficiaries just above the current age 14 cut-off of the program’s educational grant represents a loss to the government’s education and longer-term poverty reduction objectives and also to households, since a child who fails to complete high school is likely to earn much lower income as an adult,” the NAC noted.
Under the extended age coverage program, the selection of children aged 3-18 for education monitoring shall be based on the following existing policy: For Sets 1-5 households, the child beneficiaries selected by the system will continue to be monitored; For Set 6 households, existing child beneficiaries selected by the household will continue to be monitored; and For Set 7 households and onwards, the household shall select among the children included in the household roster from the registration.
The program will cover poor households with child beneficiaries up to 18 years of age or finish high school, whichever comes first. Those who turn 19 years of age within the school year will still be monitored until the end of the school year.
Lawyer Araceli F. Solamillo, Regional Director of DSWD in Northern Mindanao disclosed that after validation and enrolled back to the program, children grantees, irrespective of year level, must enroll in school and maintain a class attendance rate of at least 85% per month. For a child beneficiary enrolled in elementary school, the education grant package P300 per month. On the other hand, for a child beneficiary enrolled in high school, the education grant package P500 per month.
Solamillo added that for health conditionalities, grantees are required to have periodic checkups, growth monitoring, and vaccinations for children 0-5 years of age; twice a year intake of de-worming pills for children 6-14 years old, pre- and post-natal care for pregnant women. A health grant package P500 per household per month will be provided to households, irrespective of the household composition, that have only been in the program for 60 months or less.
The grant package will be based on the grade level of the child beneficiaries and years of program exposure of the household. The highest possible grant package is P 2,000 per household per month for households with 3 children in high school and has been in the program for less than 60 months or 5 years.
For Family Development Session, the parent grantees will be monitored monthly irrespective of household’s length of exposure. For households who have been in the program for 5 years and less, this will be tied to the health grant. For households who have been in the program for more than 5 years, this will no longer be tied to any grant.
Also, those eligible for grants for high school extension starting January 2014 will be paid retroactively.
Lanao del Norte province has the highest number of potential grantees with 15,026; followed by Misamis Oriental with 12,960; Bukidnon-8,054; Misamis Occidental-6,814; and Camiguin-1,275.
Written by Oliver Badel Inodeo, Pantawid Pamilya Information Officer/Photo by Cherrylou Acobo, Pantawid CSO focal person