Championing Nurturing Care in Crises: deploying caregiver-based interventions to improve child development outcomes in humanitarian settings

• In Event: Evidence from integrated ECD-Health interventions in conflict-affected contexts

Proposal

Young children living in humanitarian settings face a multitude of compounded challenges to survive and thrive. Currently, over 70 million children under the age of 5 have spent their entire lives in areas affected by conflict and violence[i]. An additional one billion children are at ‘extremely high risk’ of experiencing climate-related disasters[ii]. Timely, effective ECD interventions can mitigate risks and contribute to overall better learning and development[iii] [iv], yet, services to support young children in humanitarian settings tend to focus on health and nutrition outcomes, rather than care and early learning. Lack of opportunities for early learning “can hinder the development of foundational skills, placing millions of young children at a disadvantage before they even reach school age”.[v]
Building Brains aims to fill this gap by promoting responsive care and early learning practices among caregivers of children aged 0-3. BB can be easily integrated into existing health, nutrition or child protection services, and has proven effective at increasing children’s development outcomes in a variety of contexts, including in humanitarian settings[vi]. Despite this, Building Brains roll out in humanitarian settings has been relatively slow. Similar to other evidence-based, manualized ECD interventions[vii], Building Brains uptake and implementation can be challenged by multiple supply- and demand-side factors. In humanitarian settings, these challenges include protracted conflict, disruption of essential services, resource shortages, and more[viii]. Low priority, sub-optimal standards and insufficient investment for ECD interventions further limits the deployment of timely interventions in humanitarian settings.[ix]
Recognizing the need for children aged 0-3 to access ECD opportunities and understanding the potential of the Building Brains approach to address these needs, Save the Children has launched a series of implementation research studies to take stock of results so far, gain insights into areas that can be improved, and harness programmatic deployment.
This qualitative study aimed to understand the barriers and enablers for Building Brains implementation in humanitarian settings. Through a series of 20 in-depth, semi-structured interviews in 17 countries, this study assessed the perceptions of staff in programs delivering ECD interventions through BB or other approaches in development and humanitarian settings. The analysis followed emergent line-by-line, focused coding, and constant comparative methods to identify overall patterns across participants and settings.
Results suggest that ECD is largely invisible in humanitarian settings, but that there are opportunities to champion the BB approach through pre-emptively advocating for ECD before a crisis, leveraging on ECD champions across the organization, and collecting and communicating data on the effectiveness of BB to government stakeholders. The adaptability of BB is consistently seen as a strength and most participants advocated for integrating BB in existing health services, especially in humanitarian settings. Technical assistance on site selection, safe set-up of the program, emotional support for staff and parents, and monitoring and evaluation protocols require attention as areas for improvement. Suggestions for improvement include a more robust structure for sharing of BB experiences across communities/countries and targeted training guides.

Authors

• Emily Weiss, Save The Children International

• Sara Dang Dang, Save the Children

• Filipa de Castro, Save the Children