Tab 3.8 How can project components be brought together? Tab 3.8  How can project components be brought together?



There is unity in a child's needs. When these needs are fulfilled together, an interaction effect is at work that enhances child development in more than an additive way. Thus ECCD programs should be multifaceted and integrative. Yet a piecemeal approach tends to predominate in programming. Some projects focus on the health or nutrition of young children without attending to psychosocial development—or do the opposite. Many child care centers give inadequate attention to stimulation and education. And many early education programs (and even child development centers) focus almost exclusively on education, giving inadequate attention to health and nutrition.

There are many ways to strengthen integration—in planning, in training, and in the delivery of services (see box 3.1). Tab 4 discusses this topic in more detail. It argues that because health, education, and other services are organized vertically and are therefore difficult to integrate, it may make more sense to think about the convergence of services on a population or location rather than the integration of services in one master organization delivering all components. Moreover, it may be easier to phase in components than to expect integration to spring up full blown at the start of a project. It is easier to integrate plans and the content of ECCD projects than to integrate services. There is no lack of ways for bringing together the health, nutrition, stimulation, and education components of an early childhood program to take advantage of the synergistic effects of an integrated approach

Box 3.1  Ways to make components mesh to foster integrated early childhood care and development
1. Build political will so that support exists for integrated actions. This may require much attention to advocacy in the early stages of a project.
2. Apply an integrated concept of child development in training.
3. Create plans of action for children that bring together health, nutrition, and education.
4. Foster the convergence of health, nutrition, and education services on agreed on groups, communities, and institutions.
5. Strengthen the ability of community leaders, groups, and institutions to bring services together at local levels. This ability is created in part by fostering participation at all project stages, and may involve establishing local ECCD committees.
6. Incorporate missing components in existing sectoral programs. For example,

In health, add attention to psychosocial development in programs of:
  • Maternal and child health care.
  • Health education.
In nutrition, add attention to psychosocial development in programs of:
  • Food supplementation.
  • Nutrition recuperation.
  • Growth monitoring.
  • Nutrition education.
In education, add health and nutrition components by:
  • Imposing immunization requirements for admission.
  • Instituting daily health checks.
  • Providing for such services as periodic examinations and provision of food in the preschool.
  • Building part of the curriculum around health and nutrition activities.
7. Focus efforts initially, then add on according to a stepwise plan.
8. Place responsibility for coordination outside specialized agencies.