Social protection for child workers in Turkey

Child labour is a social problem that not only Turkey but the whole world struggles with today. Poverty is seen main factor leading to child labor. Due to the poverty of their families, most of children enter working life at an early age. The bad and severe conditions of working life negatively affect the physical and mental development of children and prevent them from achieving a healthy future. In addition, the negative impact of working life is not only on children, it also prevents the formation of a healthy social structure. From this point of view, the real struggle aganist child labor is through struggling with poverty. At this point, social protection programs are at the centre of the struggle aganist poverty and thus child labor. Social protection programsa play an important role in reducing the vulnerability of families to poverty and shocks it causes and in meeting basic needs. Reducing the destruvtive effect of poverty on the family will prevent families from seeing as a subsistance strategy, and families will direct children to education instead of working life. In addition, social protection programs are very important in terms of ensuring sustainable welfare and sustainable development. The aim of this study is to address the basic factors that cause child labour and to eleminate these factors and what constitutes social protection programs for children in the context of sustainable welfare and development, and the effects of these programs on children's withdrawal from working life. This study was prepared by the literature review method, and as a result of the study the main reason of child labour was seen as poverty. Social protection programs implemented both in the world and in Turkey, aimed at eleminating poverty and child labour, have made significant progress in combating child labour. However despite all these advances, it is observed that rates of child labour are not at the desired levels both in the world and in Turkey. Therefore, in order to achieve the desired results in the struggle aganist child labour, it is necessary to attach importance expanding social protection programs for the family and children. Keywords: Child Labor, Social Protection, Social Protection Programs