Abstract Increasingly, research investigates how the imprisonment of those with child care responsibilities may affect children and their outcomes. However, this research is often conducted in high-income, developed countries, with little known about its impact in low-income, least developed countries. This study starts to address this gap by examining if the imprisonment of those with child care responsibilities in Uganda, a low-income least developed country, may affect child poverty, wellbeing, health, diet, and education. Drawing on 76 interviews conducted with 61 adults and 15 children, participants were asked to recount what affect, if any, imprisonment of the child’s caregiver was believed to have on child poverty, health, wellbeing, diet, and education. The findings reveal that imprisonment was believed to have a largely negative effect on these aspects of children’s lives for most children, hindering government efforts to improve child outcomes and tackle key development challenges. Based on these findings, it is argued that our theoretical understanding of imprisonment and its effects may need to be broadened to include how differing socio-economic policy contexts may moderate the impact of imprisonment on child outcomes.
This paper describes the development of a multicomponent father-inclusive parenting intervention, Familia Bora (“good family”), designed to strengthen caregiving practices of both fathers and mothers, couples’ relationships dynamics, parental mental health, gender equity, and ultimately early childhood development. We followed a multi-phase, community-based, and iterative process to co-design this intervention in Mwanza, Tanzania through a research-practice partnership. We began with a systematic review of father-inclusive interventions followed by qualitative formative research to identify priority fatherhood behaviors and contextual determinants of fathering in the local Tanzanian context. In collaboration with local partners, we then co-designed intervention content to address these various dimensions of fatherhood from a family system, gender-transformative, and developmental perspective. We piloted and iteratively refined individual sessions through 54 rapid pretesting cycles with 381 parents (53% mothers, 47% fathers) across 13 communities and incorporated participant feedback to continuously improve content and delivery and ensure cultural relevance and acceptability. This process resulted in a structured, manualized curriculum for a community-based group parenting program for fathers and their partners with young children aged 0-2 years that holistically promotes nurturing care, couples’ relationships, caregiver mental health, and gender equality. Overall, this study showcases a systematic, evidence-based, and community-engaged approach to co-designing a father-inclusive parenting program. The resulting intervention shows strong potential to engage fathers and improve family-wide outcomes for fathers, mothers, and young children. Considering our rigorous design process and promising initial results, further implementation and evaluation research is needed to assess its feasibility, acceptability, and effectiveness.
Joshua Jeong, Juliet K. McCann, Alina Bhojani et al.
Background: Promoting high-quality early childhood development (ECD) is vital for individuals’ physical and social well-being and yields significant societal returns. However, children in marginalised regions like Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) face significant barriers to accessing quality ECD services. Aim: This study aimed to document existing ECD services in Kenya’s ASAL areas, including their availability, types and key characteristics; identify gaps in their provision and propose solutions to enhance access and quality. Setting: This qualitative study was conducted in 10 ASAL counties in Kenya. Methods: Using purposive and snowball sampling techniques, 103 key informants, including pre-primary teachers, parents, healthcare workers, religious leaders and county ECD coordinators, were interviewed. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed thematically. Results: The study found that while diverse ECD programmes exist in ASAL regions, their quality and effectiveness are hindered by challenges such as inadequate funding, insecurity, extreme weather events, food insecurity, poor infrastructure, inadequate healthcare access and limited early learning opportunities. Recommendations include increasing ECD funding, improving healthcare, enhancing early learning opportunities, promoting livelihood diversification and addressing security and food insecurity. Conclusion: Despite investments in ECD programmes, significant challenges persist, underscoring the need to provide children with high-quality services that foster nurturing care and mitigate risks to their development. This study highlights the urgency of adopting a multi-sectoral approach to strengthen ECD programmes and services in Kenya’s ASAL. Contribution: This article contributes to the scarce literature on ECD programming in Kenya’s ASALs by documenting existing ECD services, identifying critical gaps in their provision and offering actionable recommendations to address barriers to programme quality and effectiveness.
Phyllis M. Magoma, Amina A Abubakar, Martha Kaniala et al.
Early childhood development (ECD) is instrumental to shaping educational, emotional, and economic trajectories; alleviating poverty; and achieving gender equality. Pediatricians are experts in children's health and trusted sources of guidance for families and clinicians and thus are optimal ECD champions. This case study describes collaboration by the American Academy of Pediatrics, Kenya Pediatric Association, and Pediatric Association of Tanzania to activate pediatricians as ECD champions in Kenya and Tanzania. From July 2020 through January 2021, the collaborators assessed ECD needs by interviewing 20 key informants per country from governmental ministries, nongovernmental organizations, and clinical practice and assessing datasets and policy documents. In 2021, the societies recruited 15 pediatricians per country as champions; surveyed their knowledge, attitudes, and practices; and trained them on 4 core competencies: understanding early brain development science; developmental and behavioral screening, surveillance, and diagnosis; integration of ECD promotion into clinical practice; and advocacy skills for ECD and nurturing care. In 2021, each society established advocacy-in-action projects to advance ECD. In Kenya, the cohort surveyed clinicians on barriers to ECD, implemented a 2-day in-person training for 90 providers, and developed a 5-week Fundamentals of ECD course, taken by 113 pediatricians from 7 African countries. In Tanzania, champions conducted ECD training workshops for 78 health managers and 189 health care providers in 9 facilities in 7 regions and established 9 ECD corners with toys and information in health care facilities. These results highlight considerations for supporting ECD, including building on existing strengths, infrastructure, and networks; strengthening ECD knowledge among pediatricians; and advocacy skill-building.
Reshma P. Shah, Susan Wamithi, Theopista Jacob Masenge et al.
ABSTRACT In a backdrop of low‐intensity violence, this article examines how Turkana women of northern Kenya work to maintain culturally honed nurturing practices. Often referred to as AK‐47 raids, this violence disrupts even the most basic subsistence tasks. Drawing on case studies and ethnographic interviews, I document how Turkana women reimagine nurturing practices using the “creative resources” at hand. Such resourcefulness includes widows breaking with levirate marriage systems, seeking new forms of support by leaving the pastoral sector to earn income to feed their children, and planting seeds when no one expected success. Further, these acts offer insights into women's resilience by documenting the sociocultural and structural challenges experienced as they reconstitute their lives. With a growing global health emphasis on the importance of early child development, these ethnographically grounded case studies offer insights into the lengths families will go to and the challenges they face to maintain practices of care. [mothering, gender, anthropology of food, conflict, pastoralism, Kenya, East Africa]
Abstract: The effects of early childhood education on the development of behaviour at Nursery levels in Rwanda as a social safety to a bright future, has not been popular in developing countries as part of the skills developed in achieving a holistic child.The specific objectives which guide this study were: to evaluate the extent to which the teachers are involved in the implementation of early childhood education at nursery level in Gasabo District, to examine the relationship between teachers involvement in the implementation of early childhood education and behaviour development at nursery level in Rwanda in Gasabo District in Rwanda. The significance of this study will be provision of general knowledge towards the effect of early childhood education on the development of behavior at nursery level in Gasabo District in Rwanda. This study used correlation research design in order to determine the effect of early childhood education on behavior development in nursery levels in Rwanda. The population sample size was 92 respondents. Questionnaires and guided interview were used as data collection instruments where descriptive statistics and regression analysis were used for quantitative data analysis, Karl Pearson correlation coefficient was used to establish relationship between variables while regression analysis was used to check the effect of early childhood education on behaviour development. The findings have shown that 69.78 percent from early childhood education teachers that teachers’ involvement in the educational goal setting is effective towards the implementation of early childhood education. The researcher revealed that there is a significance high degree of positive correlation between teachers’ involvement in Early Childhood Education implementation and behaviour development at nursery level where Pearson coefficient of correlation states the correlation (r) of 0.580 with the p-value=0.000<0.01. The researcher recommended that the ministry of education and educational stakeholders should provide early childhood education facilities. Keywords: Early Childhood education, Behaviour Development. Title: Early Childhood Education and the Development of Behaviour at Nursery Level in Rwanda Author: Nabanoba Eva, Mukamazimpaka Marie Claire International Journal of Recent Research in Social Sciences and Humanities (IJRRSSH) ISSN 2349-7831 Vol. 9, Issue 3, July 2022 - September 2022 Page No: 151-164 Paper Publications Website: www.paperpublications.org Published Date: 22-September-2022 DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7104983 Paper Download Link (Source) https://www.paperpublications.org/upload/book/Early%20Childhood%20Education-22092022-4.pdf
Malaria is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality among children under five years of age, with most cases occurring in Sub-Saharan Africa. Children in this age group in Africa are at greatest risk worldwide for developmental deficits. There are research gaps in quantifying the risks of mild malaria cases, understanding the pathways linking malaria infection and poor child development, and evaluating the impact of malaria on the development of children under five years. We analyzed the association between malaria infection and gross motor, communication, and personal social development in 592 children age 24 months in rural, western Kenya as part of the WASH Benefits environmental enteric dysfunction sub-study. Eighteen percent of children had malaria, 20% were at risk for gross motor delay, 21% were at risk for communication delay, and 23% were at risk for personal social delay. Having a positive malaria test was associated with increased risk for gross motor, communication, and personal social delay while adjusting for child characteristics, household demographics, study cluster, and intervention treatment arm. Mediation analyses suggested that anemia was a significant mediator in the pathway between malaria infection and risk for gross motor, communication, and personal social development delays. The proportion of the total effect of malaria on the risk of developmental delay that is mediated by anemia across the subscales was small (ranging from 9% of the effect on gross motor development to 16% of the effect on communication development mediated by anemia). Overall, malaria may be associated with short-term developmental delays during a vulnerable period of early life. Therefore, preventative malaria measures and immediate treatment are imperative for children's optimal development, particularly in light of projections of continued high malaria transmission in Kenya and Africa.
Erin M. Milner, Patricia K. Kariger, Amy J. Pickering et al.
Early childhood development (ECD) parenting interventions can improve child developmental outcomes in low-resource settings, but information about their implementation lags far behind evidence of their effectiveness, hindering their generalizability. This study presents results from an implementation evaluation of Msingi Bora ("Good Foundation" in Swahili), a group-based responsive stimulation and nutrition education intervention recently tested in a cluster randomized controlled trial across 60 villages in rural western Kenya. Msingi Bora successfully improved child cognitive, receptive language, and socioemotional outcomes, as well as parenting practices. We conducted a mixed methods implementation evaluation of the Msingi Bora trial between April 2018 and November 2019 following the Consolidated Advice for Reporting ECD implementation research (CARE) guidelines. We collected qualitative and quantitative data on program inputs, outputs, and outcomes, with a view to examining how aspects of the program's implementation, such as program acceptance and delivery fidelity, related to observed program impacts on parents and children. We found that study areas had initially very low levels of familiarity or knowledge of ECD among parents, community delivery agents, and even supervisory staff from our partner non-governmental organization (NGO). We increased training and supervision in response, and provided a structured manual to enable local delivery agents to successfully lead the sessions. There was a high level of parental compliance, with median attendance of 13 out of 16 fortnightly sessions over 8 months. For delivery agents, all measures of delivery performance and fidelity increased with program experience. Older, more knowledable delivery agents were associated with larger impacts on parental stimulation and child outcomes, and delivery agents with higher fidelity scores were also related to improved parenting practices. We conclude that a group-based parenting intervention delivered by local delivery agents can improve multiple child and parent outcomes. An upfront investment in training local trainers and delivery agents, and regular supervision of delivery of a manualized program, appear key to our documented success. Our results represent a promising avenue for scaling similar interventions in low-resource rural settings to serve families in need of ECD programming. This trial is registered at ClinicalTrials.gov, NCT03548558, June 7, 2018. https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03548558.
Jill Luoto, Italo López García, Frances E. Aboud et al.
We provide evidence on the link between enrollment in public preschool and child vocabulary, a critical precursor to early literacy. We measure early childhood development among both in-school and out-of-school children in Kenya, allowing us to examine the association between preschool enrollment and cognitive outcomes. Children in our sample are more likely to start school at age three rather than age four if they live within a few hundred meters of the nearest primary school. Three-year-olds living closer to the school also have stronger vocabulary skills, though a similar pattern does not exist among older children. Using proximity to school as an instrument for preprimary enrollment, we find that preprimary enrollment raises mother tongue receptive vocabulary by more than one standard deviation at age three, but does not impact vocabulary at later ages.
Pamela Jakiela, Owen W. Ozier, Lia C. H. Fernald et al.
• Fishery access benefits early childhood development through fishing income and fish consumption pathways. • Fish species shape the benefits of fish consumption. • Fishing income benefits early childhood development through its effect on child growth. Within many global communities, access to natural resources benefits nutrition through provision of both food and livelihoods. In fishing communities, fish provide a rich source of essential nutrients, and fishing represents a critical income source. While evidence for the beneficial nutrients in fish abounds, fisheries’ integrated influence on nutrition outcomes through provisioning both fish for consumption and fishing income has not been examined. To address the full value of fishery resources’ contributions to food systems, within fishing communities around Lake Victoria, Kenya, we examined the effects of fish consumption and fishing income pathways on child gross motor, personal-social, and communication development as measured through the parent-reported Ages and Stages Questionnaire: Inventory across 210 households surveyed at nine time points over two years. We used mediation analyses to determine whether fishing income operates through or independently of child growth to affect early childhood development. Consumption of only one of two predominant fish species significantly benefited all three child development outcomes. Fishing income, through its effects on child growth, also significantly increased gross motor and personal-social development. Notably, the magnitude of effects of fishing income are comparable to those of fish consumption (ranging from 0.10 [90% CI 0.03–0.18] to 0.18 [90% CI 0.09–0.28]). Natural resources play a complex role in provisioning wild food, affecting nutrition outcomes through both diets and income. Disentangling these pathways and appreciating their relative magnitude are critical to advancing programs and policies to improve nutrition, early childhood development, and nature conservation.
Ranaivo Rasolofoson, Erin M. Milner, Brian J. Mattah et al.
