EXPANDING ACCESS TO ECCD
THROUGH DIVERSE DELIVERY
SYSTEMS
Presented at the Workshop on
Advancing Quality Early Childhood Development for
All: Strategies for going to scale.
Zanzibar, Tanzania, October 26 – 28, 2009
By Lynette Okeng'o, PhD
Presentation Outline
Introduction
 Delivery systems for improving
access
 Challenges and opportunities
 Suggestions for strengthening
programs

Expanding access
Increasing opportunities/avenues through which
children experience and benefit from services

Increased access to services that are:
 Good
quality with positive impact
 Well institutionalized
 Sustainable

Well executed expansion strategies lead to provision of
high quality, holistic, inclusive and comprehensive ECCD
services
Current Situation
35
30
25
20
15
10
5
0
a
bi
m
Za
a
l
i
an
nz
Ta
ia
er
er
ea
a
eg
en
S
ig
N
ig
N
n
ui
i
al
M
a
ri
be
Li
G
Data source: Global Education Digest, 2008 for all
except Mali and Zambia (country reports)
Who are the excluded?






Children aged 0-3 years
Children living in poverty
Orphans and vulnerable children
Children living in rural areas
Children from nomadic communities
Children with special needs
Expanding access requires extra effort in reaching
these children
Delivery systems

Centre - based programs

Community based programs

Parent empowerment programs

Health and/or nutrition programs

Home based programs
Categories not mutually exclusive
Centre based programs
Provide a good opportunity to group large numbers of children and
usually benefit from some kind of organization.
Opportunities
 Provides an opportunity for formalized, regulated and standardized
service delivery
 Multiple service providers private entrepreneurs, NGO’s, FBO’s and
to a limited extent by government through Ministry of Education
 Usually located in or near primary schools
Challenges:
 Predominantly early education programs
 Teaching methods often developmentally inappropriate
 Mostly located in urban areas catering for children in the middle to
high income groups
Expanding centre based services






Adding a reception year into formal primary school
system (South Africa, Zanzibar, Kenya)
Strengthen parent education and involvement
Promotion of ECCD programs for rapid school
readiness among hard to reach communities (KSRI)
Strengthening services to include nutrition, health,
sanitation and protection for holistic service delivery
Establishing ECCD centers in other institutions including
hospitals, work places and Churches/Mosques
Strengthen partnership with private entrepreneurs,
NGO’s, FBO’s, CBO’s etc that serve vulnerable
communities
Community based programs
Initiated by communities to address community felt needs
(CBCC’s- Malawi, NCP- Swaziland, MRC-East Africa, ECD centers in Kenya etc)
Opportunities

Possibility of reaching a large number of vulnerable children

Availability of diverse community resources

Positive social- cultural practices

Growing interest among various partners to work with communities
 Existent health and nutrition services
Challenges

Limited funding and government involvement

Limited capacity in management of centers

Caregivers and educators mostly volunteers with limited training

Weak links with national structures
Home - based programs
Usually initiated to support working mothers in low
income urban areas who need child care services (e.g
Korogocho home based day care centers- Kenya)
Opportunities


Possibility of reaching children aged 0-3 years
Serve the needs of very vulnerable communities
Challenges



Often not registered and uncoordinated
Caregivers not trained
Limited coverage
Strengthening community and homebased programs



Enhance community level management, commitment
and control
Strengthen evidence based pilot programs to encourage
replication in other communities
Establish sustainability structures through:






Strengthening linkage with national plans and programs eg
PRSP, FTI, SWAps, Vision 2020 etc
Diversified funding
Decentralized capacity building programs
Linkage with local government structures that connect to other
levels of government
Continuous effort to ensure that programs respond to
community felt needs
Establishment of Effective M&E systems

Include early stimulation into existing health,
sanitation, nutrition and protection programs to
reach the under 3’s
 Strengthen
the development component of the ACSD
strategy
 Include early stimulation in the c-IMCI family package
 Include care for development counseling sessions in
community health programs
 Include early stimulation indicators and information on
health records
Parent empowerment programs

Parent empowerment programs seek to educate and
support parents and caregivers in providing
environments that maximize children’s potential —
physically, socially, emotionally, intellectually, and
spiritually
Current situation:
 Limited coverage
 Centre on health aspects of development
 Receive low priority in programming
00-011
Why Focus on Parental
Capacity?
Sensitive Periods for Early Development
critical
period

All children have a
right to parental
love and care
(CRC Article 7, 9,
10)
critical
period wanes
Binocular vision
Central Auditory System
Emotional control
Habitual ways of responding
Peer social skills

Parents critical to
early development
Language
symbols
Cognitive
skills: relative quantity
age
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 (yrs)
Strategies for expansion



Parental education programs
 Integration of parental education into existing programs (post
natal care, adult literacy etc)
 Development of parental education manuals for all age
groups and literacy levels
 Parental education through media (newsletters, TV, radio etc)
Parental support programs
 Parent support in the Home: Home visiting
 Materials development programs
 Strengthening linkage with relevant ministry for establishment
of IGA’s
Parental Involvement programs
 Provide policy support for the establishment of PTA’s and
open days in ECCD centers
 Encourage family days in the communities
Expansion of ECCD programs calls for increased
comprehensiveness across the life cycle..
5-8yrs
• School
readiness
3-5 yrs
•Socialization,
psychosocial
interaction
Prenatal-3 years
Survival, care, and
protection
of newborn.
Nutrition security,
immunization and
cognitive
stimulation.
•Play
•Transition and
adjustment to
formal school
• Learning of
three R’s
•Maintaining good
health, nutrition
• Maintaining
good health,
nutrition
•School readiness
• Life skills
•Gender socialization
• Gender
socialization
In summary

Expansion of access requires
 Intense
advocacy and effective communication
strategies
 Government financial and political commitment
 Implementation of diverse programs based on
community felt needs
 Effective multi-sectoral co-ordination
 Strengthened partnership among various
stakeholders
 Empowered communities for enhanced sustainability
 Strengthened accountability as well as monitoring and
evaluation systems
Thank you…