absenteeism lends to increased child exploitation issues especially in rural and estate areas. Children face increasing protection challenges, with more parents seeking to include them in the workforce or admit them to childcare institutions due to increasing food insecurity, poverty and internal and external labour migration. Sri Lanka's social protection system, characterized by high levels of fragmentation, weak coordination, low coverage and large exclusion errors and limited adequacy of benefits, is not yet prepared to respond to a shock of this magnitude and to provide reliable protection for all vulnerable groups and prevent negative coping strategies