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This brief discusses the relationship between resilience, preparedness, humanitarian assistance and social protection for children in the Europe and Central Asia region. Its objective is to provide ideas and suggestions for UNICEF’s work to support social protection systems to Resilience, humanitarian assistance and social  protection for children in Europe and Central Asia better prepare, prevent, respond to and recover from crisis and emergencies affecting children and their families. The brief is intended as a resource for UNICEF staff of the Europe and Central Asia region, and partners.

The risks and shocks that affect children and families can generally be divided into:

1. idiosyncratic, i.e. driven by individual circumstances, such as the loss of a breadwinner, loss of the house, protracted illness, divorce, etc.; and

2. covariate, i.e. driven by external circumstances and affecting multiple households and communities, such as climatic (floods, cold spells), geo-physical (earthquakes), economic (austerity, debt crisis, national currency devaluation, declining remittances) and political (conflict, displacement).

Within the second category, shocks can be slow-onset shocks (a gradually worsening drought, economic crisis) and predictable (extremely cold weather in winter months), or rapid (floods) and less predictable (earthquake, tsunami).