Improved Child Nutrition and Intellectual Development through Technology, home visits and Father Involvement in India

Early childhood is a period of extreme importance in a child’s developmental journey. Research evidence worldwide points out to the importance of early stimulation in the first three years of child’s life since this is the age when maximum brain development happens in a human. Deprivation of appropriate stimulation at this time has a lasting impact on a child’s physical, cognitive and emotional health. However, opportunities for cognitive development are unavailable to most children in India. Government programmes for children, especially in the 0-3 years age group, favour cure and prevention over promotive care and are not directed towards improving cognitive development. Their focus lies in preventing children in this age group from falling off the expected basic standards on physical development charts and on supplementation if found severely undernourished.

Paternal involvement has also been found to have a positive psychological and social impact on a child that in turn has an impact on cognitive development of young children.  Government programmes currently hinge entirely on the mother as the primary recipient of information and action and do not disseminate any information on the role of a father in child development.

This study seeks to promote positive development of intellect and nutrition of children under three years of age by disseminating information and integrating gender approaches into the existing mother and child health framework. It will be built into the ongoing Integrated Child Development Services programme (ICDS) managed by the Department of Social Welfare. There are two major components to the intervention strategy.

One, using information technology to disseminate information to parents through the network of Anganwadi workers. This will happen through door to door outreach as well as messages sent over phones giving out targeted information on early stimulation, parenting, and involvement of fathers in child care as well as nutritional information to parents.

Two, increasing the involvement of the fathers in child care by conducting regular fathers group meetings which involve selected father role models, sending norm challenging messages and giving out incentives in the form of mobile phone credit.

The study will be implemented within a Randomised Control Trial with a nested qualitative longitudinal case study in order to gain an in-depth understanding of the impact of the intervention and the path to change. The overall goal is be to integrate the learnings to scale up at the state level and promote policy advocacy at the Central Government level. The widespread presence of Anganwadis as a part of The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) all over India makes a large scale implementation of these interventions highly possible.