The Federal Ministry of Health, Women’s, children and youth affairs directorate is responsible to coordinates and leads most gender, child, youth, and disability-related activities of the health sector by working closely with other directorates, federal hospitals, and agencies as well as Regional and City administration health bureau structures to ensure women, men, youth, Persons with disability equally benefit from the health services.
The directorate has been supporting all its structures which are 4 federal hospitals, 7 agencies as well as 2 City Administration and 10 Regional Health Bureaus, to ensure gender, children, youth, and Disability-related issues are mainstreamed and are given due attention at all levels of the health system.
The directorate is also given the responsibility of addressing the needs of people with disabilities. In the past years, the directorate has been working closely with Organizations of Persons with Disability (OPDs) and the National Association on various health-related issues.
Since its restructuring, WCYA Directorate has implemented a number of activities that aimed to increase the accessibility of services to women, children, youth, and persons with disabilities. Moreover, activities in relation to enhancing the capacity of service providers to mainstream gender in health service provision and empowering female and youth employees of the ministry to enable them to participate in leadership roles. WCYAD has been pushing hard to establish and strengthens Day Care centers to create a conducive work environment for women staff and to ensure children’s health rights as well as establishing and strengthening one-stop centers to prevent and respond to Gender-Based Violence (GBV).
In this process, the directorate has made remarkable achievements that can lay the foundation for the realization of its mission.
Vision
“To see women, children, youth and persons with different types of Impairment/ disability equally participated and benefited from the health services in the sector”
Mission
To ensure that women, children, youth, and disability-related issues are effectively addressed and, mainstreamed in all policies and programs implemented by the health sector and realize that women are empowered to shoulder decision-making positions.
Key Strategic Objectives
The key strategic objective of WCYAD will be directed as the following main focuses:-
- Strengthen structures of WCYA at all levels,
- Mainstreaming gender, women, children, youth, and Disability in all programs, systems, and activities,
- Women and youth empowerment,
- Child health right protection,
- Creating a conducive workplace environment for women,
- Creating accessible health services for people with disabilities.
Key Recommendations for strategic inputs
Valuable results were attained in improving the status of women/girls, youth, children, and persons with disability,
- Mainstream the issue of Women’s, Children, and Youth affairs across the health system,
- Capacity building for the health workforce,
- Generation and utilization of strategic information including research,
- Health Sector Women, children, youth affairs and, disability-related issue coordination,
- Promote women empowerment at all levels of health structure,
- Strengthen partnership and networking,
- Facilitate resource mobilization for effective and efficient utilization,
- Ensure gender mainstreaming through gender audit,
- Ensure child health rights through establishing Day Care and Brest feeding corners,
- Ensure gender-based violence health response through developing a strategic plan,
- Ensure accessible health services for people with disabilities.
Case Teams
The WCYA Directorate has two case teams
- Women and children Case Team
- Youth Case Team
Major Roles and Responsibilities
- Working in collaboration with the Federal Hospitals and Agencies as well as regional & city administration Health Bureaus women, children and youth Affair Structures and conduct a consultative workshop every 3 months,
- Provide support, follow-up, and provide feedback to strengthen W/C/Y/Affair structures of the Federal Agencies, Hospitals, and regional & city administration health bureaus,
- Preparing a strategic and annual plan of the directorate in collaboration with structure, stakeholders, and partners and cascade to the structure,
- Provide modularized and standardized training on gender-based violence for health service providers,
- Provide capacity building training to health sector professionals to mainstream the issue of women, children, youth, and disability-related issues,
- Establish and Strengthening Day Cares and breastfeeding corners,
- Strengthen and expand one-stop centers for prevention and response of Gender-Based Violence/Sexual Violence ( GBV/SV)
- Develop a guideline in relation to a child from a Health perspective,
- Establish a system for preventing sexual harassment and implement an awareness-raising mechanism on gender-based violence,
- Develop a National Strategic Plan for the Prevention and Response of Sexual Violence,
- Empower women to be able competent and qualified,
- Ensure equitable, accessible, and affordable access to people with disabilities in relation to health services;
- Strengthening internal coordination with relevant directorates,
- Strengthen coordination with partner organizations and stakeholders;
- Conduct health sector gender Audit,
- Conduct gender analysis in different thematic areas,
- Conduct research and surveys to empower women, youth, and persons with disabilities,
- Monitor and evaluate all activities of the WCYA Directorate and structures regularly and determine new methods to improve performance.