# Building the evidence chain: how National Action Plans reach the right children

Theme: CG-NAPs  
Audience: Political + Technical  
Reading time: 9 min read  
Updated: 2026-09-03  
Canonical: https://childguarantee.eu/briefs/evidence-based-naps/  
Publisher: UNICEF (Child Guarantee Learning Lab), funded by the European Union

## Summary

The strength of a National Action Plan is its evidence chain: the traceable path from who is vulnerable, where, and why, to the measures planned and the indicators that follow.

## In brief

The strength of a National Action Plan is directly related to its evidence chain: the traceable path from who is vulnerable, where, and why, to the measures planned and the indicators that follow. Greece grounded its plan in commissioned research, a deep-dive analysis and a second study, plus a national stakeholder survey identifying barriers, priorities and children's perspectives, then gave the ECG Recommendation the force of law. Portugal reached comparable coherence with no externally commissioned research, by structuring the entire plan around an in-depth analysis of nine access barriers and replicating the same diagnosis down to municipal level. UNICEF's review of the EU plans found that plans anchored in data, with dedicated evidence generation built in from the start, had more coherent logical chains, more grounded targeting and more actionable monitoring.

## The problem

In any country, the authorities responsible for the Child Guarantee can develop a National
Action Plan that includes hundreds of measures, covers all five policy areas, and references the
right data. Months into implementation, asked in a committee which specific groups of children
in need the plan will actually reach and where, and how change will be measured, the honest
answer is often that no one can trace it. The plan catalogues what the country already does and
fails to respond to the specific needs the Child Guarantee aims to address.

Three structural reasons keep recurring.

**First, sub-national and demographic disaggregation is missing.** National averages are not an
accurate picture of the most vulnerable children. Nationally or regionally collected and
aggregated indicators and existing programme data conceal territorial, ethnic, gender and
age-specific concentrations of deprivation. Across all 27 EU plans, most of the evidence base
stopped at national level; gender disaggregation was almost absent and differences between
children and adolescents were rarely distinguished, so the evidence could not fully identify the
children the plan was meant to prioritise.

**Second, consolidation is mistaken for analysis.** Assembling measures already planned across
sectoral strategies into one thematic document is fast, and the result looks complete on paper.
It rarely turns into a comprehensive and coherent plan that targets specific vulnerable groups
against identified barriers.

**Third, the chain is rarely made explicit or traceable.** Even where good evidence exists, the
connection from analysis to target group to measure to indicator is often undocumented. That
removes accountability for the choices made, and makes each subsequent planning cycle start from
scratch.

The rest of this brief covers what it takes to build and trace that evidence chain, and what a
country needs to make it happen.

> "We aimed for a plan that is child-centred and grounded in lived experience, not only in statistical analysis. Previous national measures were fragmented and lacking coordination."
>
> (Maria Doukakou, Deputy Head of the Child Protection Directorate, National Centre for Social Solidarity (EKKA), Greece, April 2026)

**Ask your team:** Can we trace one measure in our draft plan all the way back to a specific finding about a specific group of children, and forward to an indicator that will tell us if it worked?

## Different routes to a situation analysis

Documented countries reached this in different ways, and varied within each. Bulgaria, Greece
and Lithuania each commissioned dedicated deep dives with UNICEF technical support during the
Child Guarantee testing phase, some based on a single study and others on several. Czech
Republic synthesised more than 120 existing sources without commissioning new research.
Portugal combined a barrier analysis with a review of existing data. The approach was not the
deciding factor. What mattered was whether the evidence triangulated multiple sources
(administrative data, primary data collection, for example on barriers to accessing services,
and families' and children's own perspectives) and whether findings were translated into the
identification of target groups, the planning of specific measures and the development of
dedicated indicators, rather than left as a report.

### Case: Greece: An independent entity as coordinator anchored in law, and evidence from every direction

*Deep dive, national survey, school questionnaire and focus groups, triangulated into one plan.*

The National Centre for Social Solidarity (EKKA), an independent public-law entity rather than
a ministerial unit, was made National Coordinator by law. That secured political neutrality
across ministries, operational flexibility, and continuity independent of political cycles.
The evidence combined a UNICEF-supported deep dive, a second study by the IOBE
economic-research foundation, a field survey drawing around 350 responses from 173
organisations across all 13 regions and all 332 municipalities, a national school
questionnaire, and 8 focus groups reaching Roma children, children with disabilities,
unaccompanied minors, LGBTIQ+ children and children in institutions. The plan set 8 target
groups, 25 quantitative targets and a 132-indicator M&E annex.

**What transfers:** coordinating through an existing independent public-law entity;
triangulating two analytical studies with a national stakeholder survey and a students'
questionnaire; ensuring representativity for vulnerable children.

**The catch:** the deep dive was funded and staffed through the ECG testing phase. Before an
integrated data platform existed, data stayed fragmented and non-interoperable, which risked
leaving some areas out.

### Case: Portugal: Nine barriers as the spine of the whole plan

*Comparable coherence with no new external research, pushed down to municipal level.*

Portugal structured both its analysis and its measures around 9 access barriers grouped in 5
categories (financial, capacity, administrative, geographical, cultural), rather than
commissioning primary research. A four-level governance model runs from ministerial
coordination down to Local Child Guarantee Units embedded in existing municipal social-action
councils, each mandated to carry out social and barrier diagnosis locally. The plan carries 5
target groups, 76 measures and EUR 340.09 million of ESF+.

**What transfers:** the barrier systematisation is a low-cost scaffold that forces coherence
between diagnosis and measures; embedding local units in pre-existing municipal bodies avoids
creating and funding new institutions.

**The catch:** consultation methods are thinly documented, so participation's influence on the
plan cannot be verified; local replication depends on uneven municipal capacity; and the
barrier analysis is only as good as the sectoral data feeding it.

> "From the very beginning, a lot of importance was given to the construction of a diagnosis as detailed as possible. In this sense, in the preparation of the Action Plan, a process of consultations and study was carried out, looking for evidence, data and information of different natures, with the aim of identifying all the available information, but also identifying the information gaps to be worked on at the level of the implementation process of the Action Plan."
>
> (Tatiana Rego Jorge, Senior Technical Officer, National Child Guarantee Coordination, Portugal, April 2026)

## What makes it work

- **Dedicated evidence generates better plans.** Countries that commissioned a purpose-built
  analysis of child poverty, barriers to services and structural drivers of exclusion produced
  plans with more coherent logical chains, more grounded targeting choices, and more actionable
  monitoring frameworks.
- **Governance architecture determines the quality of the process.** The institutional placement of
  the National Coordinator, the composition and mandate of the working groups, and the degree of
  cross-sectoral ownership built from the beginning directly shape who contributes what to the
  analysis, whose knowledge is incorporated, and whose commitments are included in the plan.
- **Leadership anchored at the right institutional level.** The coordinator needs both the
  political authority to convene sectors and the operational continuity to sustain momentum
  across a multi-year cycle. Greece secured it through statutory mandate, Bulgaria through a
  two-tier political-plus-technical structure.
- **Civil society and children in the analysis, not only the consultation.** Direct service
  providers can corroborate or correct institutional assumptions about who is being missed and
  why, while children's and families' voices increase relevance and anchor a rights-based
  approach.
- **Enough time and support for evidence generation.** The deep-dive countries succeeded partly
  because the testing phase gave them a protected evidence window. Candidate countries should
  budget the evidence phase explicitly rather than assume it can be compressed into the drafting
  timeline; external technical support is a significant multiplier of plan quality.

**Ask your team:** Is the Ministry of Finance a co-owner of this plan from the first working-group meeting, or is it being brought in to fund decisions it had no part in shaping?

## What gets in the way

**The recurring failure modes.** Named and specific, drawn from the documented plans rather than from principle.

- **Consolidation produces a compliant document that fails on targeting.** Planning by
  collecting existing measures under the Child Guarantee umbrella satisfies the reporting
  obligation but misses the Recommendation's purpose: reaching specific vulnerable children.
- **No sub-national or demographic disaggregation.** Most analyses stopped at national level.
  However well-intentioned the measures, targeting cannot be equitable when the evidence cannot
  identify which children are most at risk or where they are.
- **Financing beyond ESF+ is largely unaddressed.** Most plans lean on ESF+ 2021-2027 without
  naming national financing past it. Only a few, such as Romania, committed state budget for
  2028-2030.
- **Measures listed without costs.** Actions appear with no attached budget or cost estimate, so
  feasibility cannot be judged and the plan cannot be sequenced or prioritised.
- **A plan with no revision cycle.** A single document written to run from adoption to 2030 with
  no scheduled review cannot absorb new evidence. Bulgaria's biennial operational cycle is the
  exception across the documented countries.

**Ask your team:** Can our evidence break child poverty down by region, age band and gender? If not, which vulnerable children are we structurally unable to see?

## What transfers, and how

The planning process needs mandate and time more than it needs special infrastructure.
Commissioning or synthesising a situation analysis, creating an intersectoral working group,
building in structured consultation, ensuring children's participation, and linking indicators
to the evidence are governance choices available in most contexts. Bulgaria, Greece, Lithuania,
Czech Republic and Portugal made them from very different starting points.

**Adaptation beats replication.** The same planning logic produced different models: Lithuania
commissioned two studies, Greece paired two analyses with a national survey, Bulgaria added
child-led research, Portugal used a barrier analysis. Copy the logic, not the exact methods and
instruments.

**Coordinator placement is a design decision with long-term consequences.** Whether the
coordinator sits in an independent body (Greece), an existing line function (Lithuania,
Bulgaria) or a dedicated unit (Portugal) shapes neutrality and continuity far more than
day-to-day administration. Attaching the role to an existing institution avoids additional
costs.

## What transfers

| Component | Transfers | Effort | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dedicated deep-dive evidence | yes | high | Needs a commissioning budget, external analytical capacity and several months. The documented cases leaned on testing-phase support to fund it. This model yields the highest return in the quality of the plan, and in principle in the results it can obtain. |
| Systematic-review evidence | yes | medium | No new fieldwork, but demands strong in-house capacity to synthesise heterogeneous sources with a child-centred lens, as Czech Republic did. It risks keeping invisible what previous research could not identify, and works best complementing dedicated research. |
| Governance architecture at the right level | partial |  | Durable and neutral where anchored in law (Greece), but dependent on a legislative window many governments might not have inside the planning cycle. |
| Participation of children and civil society in planning | yes | medium | Takes time and resources for preparatory work with children, to enable meaningful rather than symbolic participation. |
| Local embedding | context-dependent |  | Local replication depends on municipal capacity, which varies within and across countries. |

## How this applies by country

Views written for candidate and potential candidate countries. No country is ranked against another.

### Albania (AL)

**Albania has a NAP developed and not yet adopted.**

Albania officially launched the drafting of its ECG National Action Plan in July 2025, with a deep-dive analysis committed under its National Social Protection Strategy 2024-2030. With so many children still at risk of poverty or social exclusion, the priority is to use that evidence and keep strengthening the cross-sectoral governance and children's participation already in place. The nearest working model is Greece, with elements of Bulgaria's case.

- Children in poverty (2024): 44.1%
- Candidate status: 2014
- Funding instruments: IPA III + RGF
- NAP drafting launched: Jul 2025

### Moldova (MD)

**Moldova has a validated deep dive; the NAP is underway.**

Moldova is moving quickly on the accession path and has already completed and validated a deep-dive analysis, with its NAP now in progress. The lessons from Greece and Portugal can help the process run smoothly. The work now is the planning chain itself: making sure the validated deep dive connects to named target groups, measures and indicators.

- Children in poverty (proxy, 2022): 30.2%
- Candidate status: 2022
- Deep-dive status: Validated
- NAP status: Underway

### Ukraine (UA)

**Ukraine adopted its NAP in November 2025; the deep dive awaits validation.**

Ukraine adopted its NAP under conditions no documented Member State faced, wartime and large-scale displacement, with 38% of children below the national poverty line. That raises the value of disaggregated analysis rather than lowering it. National aggregates will hide displaced and institutionalised children, so sub-national and status-based breakdowns are the minimum for targeting.

- Children below national poverty line: 38%
- Candidate status: 2022
- Funding 2024-2027: Ukraine Facility
- NAP adopted: Nov 2025

## Applied scenarios

Build the plan that reaches its children: Three applied activities from the same evidence base: follow an evidence chain until it breaks, choose how to build evidence under a real deadline, and pick the governance model that survives your own institutional conflict. https://childguarantee.eu/modules/evidence-based-naps/

## Sources

- ECG NAP Comparative Synthesis Report (2026) (The evidence base behind this brief, with the five country case studies (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Greece, Lithuania, Portugal). Link pending publication.)
- Guidance on the Content and Format of the National Action Plans https://employment-social-affairs.ec.europa.eu/policies-and-activities/social-protection-social-inclusion/addressing-poverty-and-supporting-social-inclusion/investing-children/european-child-guarantee_en (European Commission, on the European Child Guarantee page.)
- A Rapid Evidence Assessment on Policy Integration and Coordination to Inform the European Child Guarantee https://www.unicef.org/eca/reports/findings-policy-integration-and-coordination-inform-european-child-guarantee (UNICEF Europe and Central Asia.)
- Child Guarantee National Action Plans at a glance https://eurochild.org/resource/child-guarantee-national-action-plans-at-a-glance/ (Eurochild's comparative overview of the submitted plans.)
- Deep Dive on Child Poverty and Social Exclusion in Greece https://www.unicef.org/greece/media/1666/file/Greece%20Child%20Guarantee%20Deep%20Dive%20Analysis.pdf (UNICEF Greece; the deep dive behind the Greek case.)
- Drafting of the National Action Plan for the Child Guarantee, Greece https://ekka.org.gr/images/CHILD_GUARANTEE/IOBE_study.pdf (The IOBE study, the second analysis Greece paired with its deep dive.)