Tools and Resources
Professionalizing Under-Recognized Cadres to Strengthen Health Systems
CapacityPlus raised awareness of the need to professionalize under-recognized cadres of health workers that play essential roles in well-functioning health systems, including contributing to the launch of global coalitions and tools to strengthen and support the supply chain and social service workforces.
Ramping Up Public Health Supply Chain Workforce Management Skills: Lessons Learned in Latin America and the Caribbean
In response to the evident need for building up the supply chain management workforce, the USAID Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean provided financial support to CapacityPlus to enhance capacities in Central American countries. The project coordinated a regional HIV/AIDS Commodity Security Workshop to share and apply lessons learned from USAID’s ten-year Latin American contraceptive security work and from specific health workforce and supply chain work already done in the region. Additionally, workshops focusing on supply chain workforce motivation and quality of services were held in the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. Building on the action plans developed at its workshop, El Salvador sought to delve more deeply into ways to systematically improve the quality of services through supportive supervision. This technical report reviews the actions taken and lessons learned in strengthening and professionalizing the supply chain workforce.
The Composition of the Social Service Workforce in HIV/AIDS-Affected Contexts
The Composition of the Social Service Workforce in HIV/AIDS-Affected Contexts
The social service workforce plays an invaluable role in supporting, protecting, and advocating for vulnerable children and families. This technical report describes the composition of the social service workforce drawn from several sources of data, including a literature review primarily focused on workforce issues in HIV/AIDS-impacted countries in sub-Saharan Africa. It is intended to help the field move toward a common understanding of functions associated with different cadres within the social service workforce, titles associated with workers who perform these functions, and education or training that is typically associated with these cadres. Taking into consideration the differences across countries, the authors propose additional emphasis on some broad areas—including examples of promising practices—that will help to clarify the composition of social service workforce. A more in-depth look at how public-sector social service workers are classified in Kenya is available as an annex.
The People That Deliver Initiative: Namibia’s Integrated Actions to Improve the Health Supply Chain Management Workforce
In November 2013, Namibia's Minister of Health presented a formal request to the People that Deliver (PtD) Board and member institutions for technical support to develop a sustainable strategy to improve access to health commodities. Led by the government of Namibia and supported by expertise from the People that Deliver Initiative and its members, notably the USAID- and PEPFAR-funded Supply Chain Management System project and CapacityPlus, the PtD-Namibia collaboration sought to understand and improve Namibia’s public sector health supply chain management workforce, focusing on the Ministry of Health and Social Services' immediate priority: staff at the central medical store and regional medical depots. This synthesis report documents the PtD-Namibia collaboration’s findings and outcomes in five priority activity areas as well as its collective results, all of which have great potential to have a positive impact on the country’s supply chain management workforce development and planning.
Working Paper on the Role of Social Service Workforce Development in Care Reform
Working Paper on the Role of Social Service Workforce Development in Care Reform
This working paper explores the topic of social service workforce development as it relates to child care reform. It is intended to be a useful resource for reform efforts and a practical overview for use by policy-makers, practitioners, and service providers in contexts that are either considering the implications of care reforms for their social service workforce or are already engaged in a process. The paper illustrates key issues by drawing on the experiences of Indonesia, Moldova, and Rwanda, three countries in the process of reform, each within their own context and history, social and political system, protection structure and services, and social service education system.