Challenges Impeding Access to Social Protection Programmes for the Elderly Poor in Skipped Generation Households

Aging is a phenomenon of concern in Kenya. As the old population grows, they diminish their endowments making them susceptible to shock and chronic poverty. They require attention and care from different interventions. Traditionally, it is expected that the young should care for the old. However, studies show that the elderly have had to take up a kinship role and raise their grand-children due to losing their children to HIV/AIDS. Skipped generation thus emerge adding an additional role to the elderly population. The government has made several efforts to protect and promote the rights of the elderly and have adopted social protection programmes whose main objective is to pro-mote sustainability and alleviate poverty as well as enhance human capacity and development. These include two cash transfers for the elderly and the OVC in their care i.e. Older Persons Cash Transfer and the Kenya Cash Transfer Programme for Orphan and Vulnerable Children. This paper examines these programmes and the possibilities of the elderly in accessing the cash transfers and the implications on their livelihoods and social well-being. Information is drawn from different sources and publications on social protection programmes in Kenya as well as from semi-structured interviews conducted among the elderly care givers, an NGO representative and local government officials. Two concepts, social exclusion and entitlement approach are used in analysing the findings that demonstrate that the elderly caregivers have been excluded and are rarely able to access the two cash transfers to which they are entitled. The elderly care givers are excluded by been denied access to cash transfers through lack of information about the existence of the programs, bias and discrimination during registration and distribution of cash transfers and unfair criteria for program registration. In addition, the programs are seen as mutually exclusive and therefore the elderly cannot benefit from both of them.