The Lancet estimates that 200 million children under-five in developing countries do not reach their cognitive, physical and social potential due to a number of biological, environmental and social risk factors that they are exposed to during the critical early stages of their development. For example, stunting, a direct result of chronic malnutrition and infection, is directly linked to poor cognitive and educational performance. It has been shown that for every 10% increase in stunting, the proportion of children reaching the final year of primary school drops by 7.9%. Correspondingly, with every 10% increase in the prevalence of poverty there is a 6.4% decrease of children entering their final year in school.
Children are also exposed to a number of psychosocial risks including under-stimulation, maternal depression, exposure to violence and environmental contamination (unsafe drinking water, smoke inhalation and heavy metal exposure), and lack of access to education. Such risks are often linked to extreme poverty and are exacerbated by high fertility rates.
On Tuesday, we had the pleasure to present ChildCount+ to a group of the world’s leading researchers on early childhood development (ECD) research conference hosted at by UNICEF. It was terrific to learn about the current research in this emerging field. While great strides have been made in recent years, the participants also identified critical knowledge gaps where there is still so little known.
ChildCount+ focuses primarily on child and maternal survival and addresses some of the core health risks like malnutrition, malaria and preventable diseases that affect early childhood development. We were, however, able to use our time at the retreat to identify some potential ways ChildCount+ could be adapted to more directly support ECD.
Health and ECD Messaging
One of the most important techniques available to promote ECD is simply raising awareness to parents, health workers and teachers on best practices for basic sanitation, nutrition, health and cognitive stimulation. In addition, it is helpful to provide parents and primary caregivers with pragmatic advice on how to look for the key physical and cognitive stages of development in their children.
One phenomenal resource for this is the Facts for Life program by UNICEF. Besides providing key lessons on breastfeeding, nutrition and growth, immunization, malaria, HIV/Aids, injury and prevention, disasters and emergencies, it also has an important section on child development and early learning. Included in this section are child development milestones that provide a parent with clear guidance on what a child should be able to do by specified ages (1 month, 6 months, 12 months, etc); it also provides concrete examples on how to stimulate the child and provides warning signs for the parents to watch for.
Source: Facts for Life
Since the hard work of developing proven content is complete, ChildCount+ could be used to send Facts for Life messages by SMS directly to CHWs and the parents of children registered in the system. This could be a means of providing effective, and potentially fun, supplementary and continuous education on ECD best practices (to foster better parenting).
School Safety Net
Working with our education team, we have also looked at how ChildCount+ could be used to create a School Health Safety Net program. Since ChildCount+ creates a living registry of all the children in a community (complete with their ages) it should be possible to provide schools with a list of all the community’s school age children at the beginning of each school year. The schools could then use ChildCount+ to ensure that all children (especially girls) are enrolled for at least their first two years of school – the critical period where most drop-outs occur.
In addition, the School Health Safety net would strengthen the link between community health care workers and teachers — important secondary caregivers to all children. Through a simple report, a teacher would be able to notify a CHW when a child has been absent from school for an extended period of time, if they become sick or injured or if the teachers suspects maltreatment (abuse, malnutrition, sanitation) problems at the home. Similarly, a teacher could be notified by the CHW when a child is found sick at home.
Cash Transfers or Mobile Based Incentives
While the value of cash transfers in ECD is still hotly debated, mobile platforms like ChildCount+ could be used to facilitate the transfer of money or vouchers to primary caregivers of children. SMS based news feeds of crop pricing, soccer scores, etc. could be used as a non-monetary incentive to reward caregivers (especially fathers) for good parenting.
Notes
- The full version of the Facts for Life book (4th Edition) can be downloaded here.
- Download the ChildCount+ presentation at the UNICEF ECD Conference
- Congrats to William Salîm Gaudin (son of Renaud — one of the lead ChildCount+ developers) who turns one today!
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