Tanzania Community Health and Social Welfare System Strengthening Program (CHSSP)

By providing technical leadership for the design, development, and roll-out of Tanzania’s first-ever HIV-sensitive National Integrated Case Management System (NICMS) for OVC, WEI/Bantwana has enhanced Tanzania’s social welfare workforce and helped PEPFAR

OVC Implementing Partners link more than 700,000 orphans and vulnerable children to essential services. The NICMS is the flagship achievement and lasting legacy of the USAID/PEPFAR-funded Community Health and Social Welfare Systems Strengthening Program (CHSSP) led by JSI Research & Training Institute, Inc. (JSI).

In Tanzania, HIV is among the leading causes of death, particularly among young people. According to UNAIDS, the country has approximately 1.64 million people living with HIV. Of those, only 18% of children living with HIV are virally suppressed, as compared to 84% of adults. (Tanzania HIV/AIDS Indicator Survey 2016-2017) Finding undiagnosed children and adolescents, linking them to care and treatment, and helping them to achieve and maintain viral suppression requires coordinated efforts between clinical health workers and community based social welfare providers. Tanzania lacks the necessary human resources for social welfare needed to control the HIV epidemic, with the biggest gaps at the community level.

Strategically positioned at the nexus of collaboration between community and facility implementing partners, the National Integrated Case Management System strengthens the social welfare workforce and connects and coordinates all service providers — governmental and non-governmental, local, district, regional, and national — working with OVC across Tanzania’s health, protection, and social welfare sectors. 

Bantwana’s expert technical assistance and support ensured a harmonized approach to OVC case management that actively facilitates referrals across the HIV care continuum to link at-risk children, adolescents, and their families to the full range of HIV and wrap around social welfare and protection/GBV services. The NICMS strengthened human resources for social welfare and HIV epidemic control where they are most needed – at the grassroots level. Capacity-development inputs built skills, retention, and meaningful supportive supervision among a nation-wide cadre of community case workers. The NICMS will continue beyond CHSSP as a legacy for creating a stronger social welfare workforce and integrating community structures that can identify at risk children and adolescents and get them tested, linked to care, retained on treatment, and virally suppressed.