Transnational agency and domestic policies : The case of childcare deinstitutionalization in Georgia

https://doi.org/10.1177/1468018120926888 Global Social Policy 1 –19 © The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI: 10.1177/1468018120926888 journals.sagepub.com/home/gsp gsp Transnational agency and domestic policies: The case of childcare deinstitutionalization in Georgia Olga Ulybina Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Finland Abstract This article describes a policy adoption case study about deinstitutionalization of childcare in Georgia since independence. It highlights the evolving and non-homogeneous nature of transnational agency in the area of childcare deinstitutionalization, and offers insights into the complex relationship between transnational agency and national policymaking. The analysis draws on national policy documents, reports of United Nations agencies, the European Union, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and non-governmental organizations that contributed to the evolution of childcare deinstitutionalization in Georgia. We trace several developments: evolution of Georgian domestic policy versus the changing role of childcare deinstitutionalization in activities of various transnational actors. We find that Georgian childcare was shifting towards deinstitutionalization at the same time as global policy actors were developing their interventions in this policy area, showing how a lower middle-income country can develop its domestic social policies in conditions of an incoherent external environment. Keywords Child care, children, deinstitutionalization, global social policy, governance, postSoviet, transnational agency Introduction The plight of Romanian orphanages in the 1990s shook the world and brought the issue of child institutionalization onto the global agenda. An important role in the childcare deinstitutionalization (hereafter, DI) reform in Romania was played by the European Union, Corresponding author: Olga Ulybina, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Tampere 33014, Finland. Email: [email protected] 926888GSP0010.1177/1468018120926888Global Social PolicyUlybina research-article2020 Article 2 Global Social Policy 00(0) which implemented child protection conditionality for EU accession, as well as other transnational actors including agencies of the United Nations (UN), multilateral and bilateral donors and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The developments in Romania, in turn, prompted a major shift in European children’s rights agenda (Iusmen, 2014; Stalford, 2012), and helped mobilize international resources to address the issue of child institutionalization. The EU involvement in Romanian childcare reform ‘created a precedent in terms of the extent and depth of EU action in this policy area’ (Iusmen in Stalford, 2012: 219). This article looks at another country in the European neighbourhood which followed Romania in adopting a childcare DI policy – Georgia. We analyse the case of childcare DI in Georgia and ask: what was the nature of EU and other transnational actors’ involvement there? In the immediately post-‘Romanian orphanages’ world, who were the key transnational actors influencing domestic alternative childcare policies? To what extent was their agency purposive and coherent? And how did their agency relate to the evolution of domestic childcare policies in Georgia? DI policy aims to guarantee that every child grows up in a family, or in a family-like environment (Costa and Giraldi, 2014; UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, 2009). This includes closing down large childcare institutions, preventing child abandonment, family reintegration, providing high-quality and inclusive health care, education and social support services, as well as alternative childcare services (foster care, adoption, day care homes). For children without parental care, post-independence Georgia had a Soviet system of residential institutions. Between 2003 and 2014, Georgia reduced the number of children in residential care from 8155 to 1100, that is, by about 86% (calculated on the basis of TransMonEE, 2016), becoming one of the first lower middleincome countries to deinstitutionalize childcare. While formal policy adoption and related statistics are rarely indicative of the actual depth of reform and quality of policy implementation, or impact, we leave a more comprehensive evaluation of policy outcomes outside the scope of this article, as such analysis would require a methodological approach and source material different to that employed here. Below, we trace how DI policy developed in Georgia, how transnational actors contributed to this development, and whether this reflected the mainstreaming of childcare DI in European and global policies. We discuss what this tells us about the nature of transnational agency in the Georgian case, and more broadly about domestic social policy formation in conditions of emerging transnational agency. Looking at social policy changes through the lens of transnational agency is particularly justified in countries like Georgia, one of the post-communist countries, which have been strongly shaped by the ‘pervasive influence of transnational actors’ (Orenstein et al., 2008: 1). Transnational actors can be individual or collective, including, for example, international governmental and NGOs, foundations, activist groups and networks, as well as ‘individual policy advocates and translators’ (Deacon and Stubbs, 2013: 15). Since the 1990s, the European Union has arguably been the most prominent transnational actor in the region (e.g. Orenstein et al., 2008). The case study method (e.g. Gerring, 2016) will provide space for sufficiently detailed analysis, based on national policy documents, reports of UN agencies, the European Union, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and relevant NGOs. The article first discusses the emergence and development of DI policy in Georgia, in the context of diverse transnational actors and their activities Ulybina 3 in the area of alternative, out of home childcare. The discussion section considers the shifting transnational DI agency and roles played by different global policy actors in the DI process in Georgia. DI of childcare in Georgia How policy reform unfolded The DI reform unfolded in conditions of globalization, economic growth and targeted support of Georgian child welfare and DI reform by transnational actors. At independence in 1991, Georgia was a small, conflict-ridden and poor country (World Bank Group, 2018), with an inadequate system of public social assistance. Between 1997 and 2016, however, the Georgian economy grew at an annual average rate of 5.5% (World Bank Group, 2018: 5). Favourable economic ground for reform was created by significant foreign aid, which Georgia received in the wake of repeated crises. To give just a few examples of allocations: €370 million from the EU in 1992–2003 (European Commission (EC), 2004), additional €125 million from the European Commission for 2004–2006 (EC, 2004); US$259 million from the Millennium Challenge Corporation (USA) in 2005 and US$143 million from the World Bank for 2006–2009 (UN Country Team in Georgia, 2005). According to World Bank Data, official development aid accounted for over half of government expenditure until 2003, amounting to over 80% in 2001 and 2002 and then decreasing to about 20% in the late 2000s (World Bank Group, 2020). In these conditions, Georgia carried out governance and public sector reforms (The World Bank, 2012; World Bank Group, 2018). One of these reforms was the DI of childcare. The DI reform in Georgia can be viewed as a two-stage process. In the late 1990s–early 2000s, the government made its first attempts at DI, including the first DI pilot projects (UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, 2006), setting up a DI working group (1999), training social workers (OCHA, 2003b) and adoption of the Georgian National plan of action for children 2003–2007 (Government of Georgia, 2003). In 2003, the Rose Revolution, a peaceful power change, removed President Shevardnadze, associated with Georgia’s Soviet past and installed a pro-reform, pro-Western government. From this point, the DI reform moved to the next stage, with allocated public funding (Irimia and Shatberashvili, 2015; UNICEF, 2009). In 2005, the Georgian government introduced ‘a moratorium on entries in large size institutions under reorganization’ (Irimia and Shatberashvili, 2015: 60). The Government’s Plan of Action for Child Protection and Deinstitutionalization 2005–2008 included optimization of childcare institutions; administrative and legal reform of childcare and registration of children with disabilities (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, UN CRC, 2007: 6). The whole child welfare system was overhauled and integrated with the system of social assistance (O’Brien and Chanturidze, 2009). Social assistance became needs-based, allowing better targeting of vulnerable families. Alternative childcare services, such as foster care and day care centres, were expanded; a new gatekeeping policy and family reintegration support were introduced. With the adoption of the new Government’s Child Welfare Plan of Action 2008–2011, the child welfare reform broadened its scope from mere DI and reducing the number of children in institutions to ensuring welfare of all children (Government of 4 Global Social Policy 00(0) Georgia, 2008). The DI reform continued a new law on adoption 2008; a national campaign to promote foster care and introduction of a family reunification package (Cantwell et al., 2012: 45; European Commission (EC), 2010; Greenberg and Partskhaladze, 2014; O’Brien and Chanturidze, 2009: xi). By the late 2010s, Georgia was on a par with Western European countries in terms of childcare DI, the DI reform expanded to include more children with disabilities and non-state children’s homes (Public Defender of Georgia, 2015; UNICEF, 2015). Transnational agency: individuals and NGOs Georgian DI policy shift was enabled by newly emerging local, non-state DI initiatives. As the country became more open after independence, childcare professionals from countries, which were more ‘advanced’ in DI, started arriving in Georgia and bringing in new ideas and practices of working with children. Often, individuals and organizations came initially with humanitarian aims to help meet the basic survival and health needs of the population. As the economic situation improved and immediate needs of food, shelter and basic health care were addressed, those actors switched their attention to other problems, including the issue of child institutionalization. In 1996, child psychologists Dr Jane-Mary Castelfranc-Allen Rawls (registered clinical psychologist, the New Zealand Psychological Society) and Dr Barry S. Parsonson (registered clinical psychologist, the University of Waikato, NZ) visited Georgia and stayed for nearly two decades to teach hands-on skills to professionals working with special needs children. To publicize the plight of children, in 1998, they set up the Children of Georgia Project, which involved international knowledge exchange trips to and from Georgia, to train personnel in familyand community-based care for disabled and special needs children, with a view to removing them from large childcare institutions. The project later developed into the NGO ‘Children of Georgia’, which in 2005– 2012 carried out a number of projects to support the DI of disabled children and provide technical support to the government for the child welfare reform. They advocated for the DI reform with the government, worked with ministries and UNICEF, assisted in developing policies and programmes to deinstitutionalize disabled children. So, although their activity was mostly visible during the intensive reform period since the mid-2000s and the NGO itself was officially registered only in 2006, the foundation for their work was laid much earlier in the late 1990s. In 1998, the First Step charity was founded in Georgia by Jane Corboy, wife of the first EU Ambassador to Georgia and Nino Kidigidze Zhvania, wife of the to-be prime minister of Georgia. After their first attempts to improve the services for children with disabilities within existing institutions through staff retraining programme proved unsuccessful, they turned to international experience and set up a new community-based programme. They set up pilot programmes to provide care for children with special needs, introducing the new professions of occupational therapy and social work to Georgia. They supported family reunification, prevention of abandonment and opened the First Step Village, initially for 12 children, in 2002. In 2003, the First Step launched integrated education in one of Tbilisi’s schools, one of the first steps towards inclusive education in Georgia. In 2001, the First Step social workers engaged in the state-run DI programme, Ulybina 5 ‘Deinstitutionalisation, children back to their biological families’, and partnered with the government on the DI reform after the change of government in 2003. In 2005, they opened a day care centre for children with special needs in the village. By 2008, the First Step developed into a major player in DI implementation: it ran training programmes for caregivers upon UNICEF request, and organized DI policy trips for Georgian policy makers and social work practitioners to Ireland. Ten years after they started, in 2009, the First Step reached their goal of closing the Kaspi children’s home. Since 2010, they closed their housing cottages, focussing instead on family support services, early intervention programmes and staff training. Importantly, although now the First Step, as an innovative provider of training and services for children with special needs, is a key player in the DI reform in Georgia, back in 1990s, it started without a clear DI idea, but rather with an idea to merely improve the conditions within institutions. Moreover, their first attempts to bring about change date back to 1995, when they partnered with UNICEF, Echo, Save the Children and Caritas and set up a programme to improve the lives of children in four orphanages. Their programme ran for a year and cost US$200,000, but with no result. ‘There was little or no difference to the lives of the children. They still lived in a vacuum. Staff attitudes had not changed’ (Corboy, 2009). The NGO New Life started operating in 1998: Nata Rostomashvili and Mariam Dagundaridze, supported by the American Friends of Georgia, started a school for children with mental and physical disabilities in Telavi, Kakheti Region. The objective was to provide sensitive day care and education to these children and an alternative to institutionalization. So, by the late 1990s, a number of NGOs had started to provide services without which effective DI would not be possible in Georgia – alternative to institutions childcare settings, integrating children with disabilities into society and so on. The 1990s was thus a time when various new actors and initiatives emerged, working to improve the situation of children in institutions. These initiatives led to the wide realization that the old approach of trying to improve the quality of life in institutions was not effective, and a more radical solution, that is, DI, was needed. These organizations later supported the government’s DI reform and in the 2010s received foreign funding from the EU, UNICEF, Save the Children and so on. However, in the 1990s, they were not part of any organized transnational Georgia-targeted activities. Major transnational actors Georgia embarked on the DI reform at a time of increased international interest in children’s rights and welfare, with a series of major agenda-setting events, such as the 1990 World Summit for Children, the International Year of the Family 1994, the UN General Assembly Special Session on Children 2002, the Stockholm Conference on Children and Residential Care 2003 and the rise of new DI-focussed transnational actors, such as Hope and Homes for Children (1994) and LUMOS (2005). After the plight of children in Romanian orphanages was revealed in the 1990s, child policies attracted international attention (e.g. 1999 World Report of Human Rights Watch with its special section ‘Orphans and Abandoned Children’; ‘Towards an EU Human Rights Agenda for Children’ [Save the Children, 1998]; ‘A World Fit for Children’ [UNICEF, 2002]; ‘Children on the Brink’ [UNAIDS, UNICEF and USAID, 2002]). From around 2000, 6 Global Social Policy 00(0) UNICEF focussed on supporting the reforms of childcare, including DI, in Central and Eastern Europe (see ‘The Budapest Statement’). In other words, the DI reform in Georgia occurred at a time of increased global attention to child policies. Although children in institutions were on the international agenda, there was no significant pressure on Georgia to reform from outside the country in the early stages of DI reform. For example, the above-mentioned Human Rights Watch report focussed on the ‘big’ cases of Romania, China and Russia, but did not mention Georgia (HRW, World Report 1999), and neither did any of its other reports from the 1990s. There is no evidence that the above-mentioned external events directly led to reforms in Georgia, but they possibly helped the transmission of the idea of DI and some local DI-related projects into Georgia. In 1994, Georgia acceded to the UN CRC. The convention (UNHR, 1989) provided a generic framework for reform, and asserted a child’s right to grow up in a family environment. Starting in 2000, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child repeatedly highlighted the need for DI reform in Georgia and provided more detailed guidance in its Concluding observations. The list of issues to be taken up in connection with the consideration of the initial report of Georgia encouraged Georgia to make institutions more child-friendly and increase its DI efforts, although no direct recommendation to reduce the number of children in institutions was made: ensure the periodic review of placements in institutions; . . . introduce measures to guarantee and protect the human dignity of children living in institutions and to make these institutions more child friendly . . . to increase the level of resources allocated for the protection and care of children deprived of a family environment . . . increase its efforts to prevent institutionalization and pay special attention in that regard to vulnerable families by, for example, providing them with adequate support services . . . provide adequate resources, both financial and human, for effective implementation of the new law on foster care; introduce programmes to raise awareness and promote foster care . . . (UN CRC, 2000: 7). In 2003, the Committee recommended to ‘continue measures to strengthen support for families to enable them to care for their children at home’, ‘strengthen and intensify the programme of de-institutionalization’ and so on (UN CRC, 2003: 7–8). UNICEF has been the main partner of the Georgian government in DI reform since independence. UNICEF coordinated the activities of other partners, leveraged additional funding, provided policy advice and expertise and was involved in all key aspects of the reform (Irimia and Shatberashvili, 2015; UNICEF, 2013). Between 2000 and 2005, UNICEF was expanding its activities on the ground across the region and at the same time, building their own capacity to support the DI reform in the countries. In 2003, ‘to guide country offices on a common agenda for child care reform’, UNICEF and the World Bank developed ‘toolkits for reformers’ in the following three key areas of DI reform: on improving the gatekeeping system; on the standards of services and on how to reallocate resources from residential care to community-based services (UNICEF, 2013). The first national-level attempts at DI mentioned above were joint efforts of national and transnational actors. For example, the DI working group included UNICEF, Ulybina 7 EveryChild, World Vision International, the First Step Foundation, the World Bank, representatives of the Georgian government, Ombudsman’s office and a few others. Georgia has maintained relationships with the EU since the 1990s, and became a member of the Council of Europe in 1999. However, to our knowledge, their representatives were not part of the DI working group. Unlike Romania, the European Union did not impose child welfare conditions on Georgia in the 1990s. Rather, at the initial stage, the European Union indirectly influenced Georgian childcare institutions by providing budgetary and technical support, primarily through EC Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS) and the EC Food Security Programme (EC FSP), which started with generic aims of poverty reduction, financing family allowance benefits and ensuring basic social provision, such as food and health care. It also funded existing childcare institutions, helped set up their inventory and supported their refurbishment (Tasker and Ispiryan, 2010: 10–11). No DI conditions were initially attached to EU funds. From 2003 to 2004, the nature of EU involvement changed. The focus of EC FSP changed to the DI of childcare, gatekeeping and transfer of children to family-based settings. The DI reform was laid down as a set of specific conditions for budgetary support in the EC FSP 2005–2006, worth €20 million for 2 years (European Commission (EC), 2005b). The conditions consisted of key steps for DI reform, elaborated in detail for 2 years (European Commission (EC), 2005b: 14–17). Unlike early interventions through TACIS (European Commission (EC), 2003a: 16), the DI-related conditionality is thought to have accelerated the DI reform in Georgia (e.g. Irimia and Shatberashvili, 2015: 46). The technical assistance to the DI reform was channelled through EC TACIS, in particular, the project ‘Support to Child Welfare Reform in Georgia’, 2006–2010. The project helped develop new legislation, standards of childcare, human resources and public awareness (European Commission (EC), 2007, 2010; Thomas et al., 2006: 41). The EC supported child welfare reform through FSP and TACIS until 2010, after which EC assistance related to DI only indirectly – through projects in health care, vocational education, justice, issues of internally displaced peoples and so on (Tasker and Ispiryan, 2010). In the post-revolution period, other foreign donors also started actively support DI work in Georgia. In 2004, the World Bank funded a pilot School Feeding Project for Deinstitutionalization (UN WFP, 2004). UN agencies and NGOs like the British charity EveryChild were actively helping the government to run pilot projects, building the necessary human resources, to enable the realization of DI reform on the ground (OCHA, 2003b; UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS, 2006). From 2005, USAID’s Displaced Children and Orphans Fund provided funding for the DI reform in Georgia (Civil Georgia, 2004; United States Congress 109–101, 2006: 16, 64), through UNICEF and NGOs (Thomas et al., 2006: 45; UNICEF and USAID Georgia, 2014). At the time when USAID started supporting the DI reform in Georgia in 2005, DI promotion was not yet systematically part of the US government’s external action. It was only at that point, in 2005, that the United States adopted the US Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act, which focussed US development programmes on family support and community-based programmes (U.S. Government, 2005: 2113). Since 2010, USAID increased its support to the DI 8 Global Social Policy 00(0) reform in Georgia, upgrading the infrastructure, supporting family reunifications, developing foster care and small group homes. Discussion: transnational agency and domestic policy development as co-evolving processes Transnational DI advocates and supporters, such as the EU, the UN and USAID, were not all equally involved in Georgian DI reform from the start. The emergence and development of DI policy in Georgia was shaped by various global and national policy actors who played different roles in this policy area at different times. From the mid-1990s, individual, grassroots initiatives emerged with the general aim to improve conditions in childcare institutions. It was not uncommon for these initiatives to be set up by foreigners, in conditions of intensified globalization and cross-border migration, which brought new people with high agency potential and possibly different views on what constitutes acceptable childcare. These initial DI activities have been little considered in previous literature about DI reform in Georgia (e.g. Calinescu and Calinescu, 2016; Greenberg and Partskhaladze, 2014), with more emphasis placed on the Rose Revolution and international donors. The Rose Revolution undoubtedly provided a strong impetus for reform, however, the foundation for policy change (knowledge, ideas, skills, etc.) started developing earlier, including through immigrants’ transnational agency. The potential of such transnational individual agents to transform domestic social policies is little studied. The global social policy literature, although putting international actors in focus and recognizing the importance of individual actors (Deacon and Stubbs, 2013), has often tended to interpret transnational agency as international organizations, NGOs or supranational organizations (Foli, 2016; Kaasch et al., 2019; Kaasch and Martens, 2015), rather than individual migrants. While a strong focus on major organizational actors is unsurprising, it ignores the roles of individual, independent transnational actors, who in their daily lives and activities re-assert and reproduce social ideas and practices they brought with them from other social systems, and are likely to turn to international experience in search of solutions (as in the example of the First Step NGO). Furthermore, when individual agents become the focus of analysis, it often concerns individuals in position of power or within prominent existing organizational structures, for example, civil servants and staff of international organizations (Deacon and Stubbs, 2013). Our case highlights the need to better understand the policy-transformative role of ‘ordinary’, non-elite transnational migration. It raises the question to what extent and under what conditions such individual agents transform the social space around them, with knock-on policy effects. While international organizations can act as norm entrepreneurs that formulate policies and guidelines, individual transnational agents outside established organizational structures can ‘make a difference’ in other ways – through iterative and adaptive practice of social transformation, rather than policy formulation. Such was, for example, the case of the founders of the First Step charity in Georgia, whose activities saw an evolution from improving existing services in institutions to a more radical DI, when initial efforts failed to deliver. The Georgian story suggests that ‘ordinary’ individual transnational actors, as they moved from ad Ulybina 9 hoc initiatives to institutionalized partners of the government and key international organizations, through meetings, delivering training and organizing international learning programmes, were in a position to transmit new policy ideas to national policy makers and practitioners. Our case, therefore, raises questions about the contribution of knowledge, skills and ideas transfer by expatriates to national social policy transformations and the conditions when expatriates’ agency can become a leverage for policy reform. For many years, state funding of Georgian children’s homes and boarding schools was inadequate and children’s institutions relied on the assistance of international aid agencies (Implementation of the Convention . . ., 1999: 14). In the early 2000s, there were no strong international advocacy coalitions to lobby for the DI of childcare in Georgia. In fact, it would have been probably ‘easy’ for the government to obtain more aid for children’s institutions and maintain the status quo, rather than embark on reform. As late as 2004, reports highlighted the need for ‘better coordination of efforts among donors and NGOs and the relevant government ministries involved in care and assistance to children in institutions to avoid donor initiatives which could be counterproductive for the deinstitutionalization process’ (OCHA, 2004). So, the earlier lack of DI reform in Georgia was not against the trend, and the initial lack of political will for reform in a way mirrored actions of international donors, who were maintaining institutions rather than unanimously lobbying for DI reform. Since about the mid-2000s, donors and humanitarian partners started explicitly urge the Georgian government to embark on the DI reform, specifying the concrete steps to be made (OCHA, 2003a, 2004), and provided funding for it. This situation, when international donors funded residential care, creating barriers to a transition to community-based care, was not unique to Georgia. Until very recently, in various countries (e.g. Flagothier, 2016; LUMOS, 2015), international donors continued to prop up institutions, by funding and trying to repair and ‘fix’ them, rather than radically reform or dismantle. UN agencies played an important role in the 1990s and early 2000s. In 1990s–2000s, the Georgian DI reform was unfolding with encouragement and guidance from the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. However, it was only a decade later, in 2009, that the UN issued more specific guidance – the UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children, aimed at enhancing the realization of the UN CRC, particularly concerning the provision of a family environment. By this point, Georgia was already well into DI reform. Georgian DI shift was thus unfolding in parallel to the UN developing its governance tools for alternative care of children. At the time of initial DI policy emergence in Georgia, the EU could be described as a transnational agent for DI, only in terms of being a cluster of DI advocates, first disjointed and later turning into an advocacy coalition. Changes on the ground were propelled to a large extent by not by the EU as an organization with well-defined child welfare policies or child-oriented foreign policy, but rather by various individual actors and charities from Europe, in particular, the United Kingdom: EveryChild/European Children’s Trust, First Step and Save the Children. The EU provided ample assistance to the DI reform in Georgia, however, the nature of their involvement changed over the years, and the clear focus on DI was absent during the early stage of reform. The EU was not directly involved in the DI until mid-2000s. 16 Global Social Policy 00(0) EEG (2016) Report on the state of play of the deinstitutionalisation process and the development of community-based care in the European Union. The European Expert Group on Transition from Institutionalisation to Community-Based Care. Available at: https://eustructuralfundswatchdotcom.files.wordpress.com/2016/01/diineu-report-eeg-profiles.pdf. EEG (2018) The European expert group on the transition from institutional to community care. Available at: https://deinstitutionalisation.com/european-expert-group/ (accessed 27 February 2019). Flagothier C (2016) Alternative Child Care and Deinstitutionalisation in Asia: Findings of a desk review. SOS Children’s Villages and European Commission. Available at: https://www.soschildrensvillages.org/getmedia/1b925bf1-5587-4f7f-976a-92293ddfeb09/Asia-AlternativeChild-Care-and-Deinstitutionalisation-Report.pdf Flockhart T (2010) Europeanization or EU-ization? The transfer of European norms across time and space. Journal of Common Market Studies 48(4): 787–810. Foli R (2016) Transnational actors and policymaking in Ghana: The case of the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty. Global Social Policy 16(3): 268–286. Gerring J (2016) Case Study Research: Principles and Practices. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Government of Georgia (2003) National Plan of Action for Children, 2003–2007. Tbilisi: Government of Georgia. Government of Georgia (2008) The Decree No 869 of 10 December 2008 of the Government of Georgia on Approval of the 2008-2011 State Action Plan on Child Welfare. Tbilisi: Government of Georgia. Greenberg AL and Partskhaladze N (2014) How the republic of Georgia has nearly eliminated the use of institutional care for children. Infant Mental Health Journal 35(2): 187–191. Implementation of the Convention on Children’s Rights in Georgia (1999) A Report of NonGovernmental Organizations. Georgia NGO CRC Coordinative Council. Tbilisi, Georgia. IP/99/751. EU Press release. Brussels, 13 October. Available at: http://europa.eu/rapid/pressrelease_IP-99-751_en.htm (accessed 13 January 2019). Irimia R and Shatberashvili N (2015) Evaluation of results achieved through child care system reform 2005-2012 in Georgia. Evaluation Report to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Country Office Georgia. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/evaldatabase/files/Evaluation_ of_results_achieved_through_child_care_system_reform_2005-2012_in_Georgia.pdf. Iusmen I (2013) Policy entrepreneurship and Eastern enlargement: The case of EU children’s rights policy. Comparative European Politics 11(4): 511–529. Iusmen I (2014) Children’s Rights, Eastern Enlargement and the EU Human Rights Regime. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press. Joint Staff Working Document ‘The EU Special Incentive Arrangement for Sustainable Development and Good Governance (‘GSP+’) covering the period 2014–2015, Brussels, 28.01.2016 SWD(2016)8. Available at: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?ur i=CELEX%3A52016SC0008. Kaasch A and Martens K (eds) (2015) Actors and Agency in Global Social Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kaasch A, Koch M and Martens K (2019) Exploring theoretical approaches to global social policy research: Learning from international relations and inter-organisational theory. Global Social Policy 19(1–2): 87–104. Lavenex S (2013) A governance perspective on the European Neighbourhood Policy: Integration beyond conditionality? In: Epstein RA and Sedelmeier U (eds) International Influence beyond Conditionality Postcommunist Europe after EU Enlargement. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 143–165. Ulybina 17 LUMOS (2015) Dollars and Sense: Supporting Children Outside of Family Care: Opportunities for US Government International Assistance. Washington, DC: Lumos Foundation USA. O’Brien C and Chanturidze T (2009) UNICEF: Assessment of the child welfare reform process in Georgia. Available at: http://unicef.ge/uploads/OPM_report_edited.pdf (accessed 15 January 2019). OCHA (2003a) Georgia humanitarian situation and strategy 2003. February. Available at: https:// reliefweb.int/report/georgia/georgia-humanitarian-situation-and-strategy-2003 (accessed 15 February 2019). OCHA (2003b) OCHA-Georgia information bulletin for the period 1-15 March 2003. Available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/georgia/ocha-georgia-information-bulletin-period1-15-march-2003 OCHA (2004) Georgia Humanitarian Situation and Strategy 2005. Tbilisi: UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs. Orenstein MA, Bloom SR and Lindstrom N (eds) (2008) Transnational Actors in Central and Eastern European Transitions. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Parker C and Bulic Cojocari I (2016) European structural and investment funds and people with disabilities in the European Union. European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies. Available at: https://op.europa.eu/en/publication-detail/-/publication/402fe8d6ab00-11e6-aab7-01aa75ed71a1/language-en. Public Defender of Georgia (2015) Children’s rights monitoring in boarding houses run by the Georgian Orthodox Church and the Muslim confession. Report of the Public Defender of Georgia. Tbilisi. Available at: file:///C:/Users/User/Downloads/Georgia_Special%20 Report_Monitoring%20in%20boarding%20house%20run%20by%20religious%20confessions_2015_EN.pdf. Report on assessment of the applications for the special incentive arrangement for sustainable development and good governance Accompanying the document COMMISSION DELEGATED REGULATION establishing Annex III of Regulation (EU) No 978/2012 applying a scheme of generalised tariff preferences. Brussels, 28.8.2013 SWD(2013)313 final. Ruxton S (1999) Working Agenda for Children: A children’s policy for 21st century Europe: First step. Report of EURONET Symposium 27 and 28 January 1999 in Brussels. Euronet, Brussels. Sasse G (2013) The Politics of EU conditionality: The norm of minority protection during and beyond EU accession. In: Epstein RA and Sedelmeier U (eds) International Influence beyond Conditionality Postcommunist Europe after EU Enlargement. Abingdon: Routledge, pp. 47–65. Save the Children Sweden (2001) Unfinished Business – EU Enlargement and Child Rights. Stockholm. Schimmelfennig F (2012) Europeanization beyond Europe? Living Reviews in European Governance 7(1). Available at: http://www.livingreviews.org/lreg-2012-1 (cited 21 March 2020). Slim H (2002) Not philanthropy but rights: The proper politicisation of humanitarian philosophy. The International Journal of Human Rights 6(2): 1–22. Stalford H (2012) Children and the European Union: Rights, Welfare and Accountability. Oxford; Portland, OR: Hart Publishing. Tasker P and Ispiryan Y (2010) Assessment of the situation of the social-related policies in Georgia, needs analysis and recommendations for future assistance including a Potential Sector Policy Support Programme. Prepared for the European Commission. AGMIN ITALY S.R.L. The Lisbon Treaty (2007) European Union, Treaty of Lisbon Amending the Treaty on European Union and the Treaty Establishing the European Community, 13 December, 2007/C 306/01. 18 Global Social Policy 00(0) The World Bank (2012) Fighting Corruption in Public Services: Chronicling Georgia’s Reforms. Washington, DC: The World Bank. Thomas C, Nelson L, Ellingen M, et al. (2006) Domestic Violence and Child Abuse in Georgia. Tbilisi: Minnesota Advocates for Human Rights and Institute for Policy Studies. TransMonEE (2016) Georgia country data, 1989-2015. Available at: http://transmonee.org/country/georgia/ (accessed 23 January 2019). UN Country Team in Georgia (2005) Georgia: Humanitarian and development update Sep 2005. Available at: https://reliefweb.int/report/georgia/georgia-humanitarian-and-developmentupdate-sep-2005 (accessed 28 February 2019). UN CRC (2000) Concluding observations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. CRC/C/15/ Add.124, 28 June. Tbilisi: CRC. UN CRC (2003) Concluding observations. CRC/C/15/Add.222, 27 October. Tbilisi: CRC. UN CRC (2007) Third periodic report of States parties due in 2006. Georgia. CRC/C/GEO/3, 22 August. Tbilisi: CRC. UN Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children (2009) General Assembly resolution 64/142, Guidelines for the Alternative Care of Children,A/RES/64/142 (24 February 2010). Available at: https://undocs.org/en/A/RES/64/142 UN WFP (2004) World food programme. Annual Report. World food programme, Rome, Italy, 24–26 May. UNAIDS and UNICEF (2004) The Framework for the Protection, Care and Support of Orphans and Vulnerable Children Living in a World with HIV and AIDS. New York: UNAIDS and UNICEF. UNHR (1989) General Assembly, Convention on the Rights of the Child. New York, 20 November. Available at: https://www.ohchr.org/Documents/ProfessionalInterest/crc.pdf UNICEF (2009) Analysis of the progress, remaining challenges and trends in Child Care System Reform: Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. Chisinau, Moldova. Available at: http://www.unicef.org/ceecis/Regional_Analysis_Progress_of_the_Child_Care_System_ Reform_ENG.pdf (accessed 3 September 2015). UNICEF (2013) Regional Knowledge and Leadership Agenda (RKLA 1) Child’s right to a family environment Multi-country evaluation of results achieved through child care system reform 2005-2012. Terms of Reference. UNICEF (2015) Country programme document Georgia. Available at: http://www.unicef.org/ about/execboard/files/2015-PL14-Georgia_CPD-EN-27Jul2015.pdf (accessed 17 January 2019). UNICEF and USAID Georgia (2014) Strengthening child care services and systems. End-ofProgram Report, UNICEF Georgia, September 2010–March 2014. UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS (2006) Evaluation of child protection projects, Georgia. Available at: https://www.unicef.org/evaldatabase/files/Georgia_evaluation_Familysupport_ Fostercare.pdf (accessed 10 December 2018). United States Congress 109-101 (2006) Protecting street children: Vigilantes or the rule of law? Hearing before the Subcommittee on Africa, Global Human Rights and International Operations of the Committee on International Relations House of Representatives. One Hundred Ninth Congress. U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC; DIANE Publishing, Darby, PA, 13 September. U.S. Government (2005) Assistance for Orphans and Other Vulnerable Children in Developing Countries Act of 2005. Pub. L. 109-95, 119 Stat. 2111, codified as amended at 22 U.S.C. Section 2151. Available at: https://www.govinfo.gov/app/details/STATUTE-119/STATUTE119-Pg2111. Ulybina 19 U.S. Government (2012) United States Government action plan on children in adversity. A Framework for International Assistance: 2012–2017. Available at: https://www.childreninadversity.gov/docs/default-source/default-document-library/apca.pdf?sfvrsn=2 (accessed 1 March 2019). U.S. Government (2018) U.S. Government international assistance for children in adversity. Available at: https://www.childreninadversity.gov/about/how/action-plan (accessed 1 March 2019). World Bank Group (2018) Georgia: From Reformer to Performer: A Systematic Country Diagnostic. Washington, DC: World Bank. World Bank Group (2020) World development indicators. Available at: https://data.worldbank. org/indicator/DT.ODA.ODAT.XP.ZS?locations=GE (accessed 8 April 2020). Author biography Olga Ulybina (PhD, Cantab) is a Marie Curie Research Fellow at Tampere University (Finland). She is interested in a broad range of issues relating to institutional change, international development and transnational governance. Her particular expertise is in environmental and child care policies.