Health & Nutrition Initiatives

Quality Improvement in AWCs services and strategic intervention for reduction in malnutrition

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) programme is a globally recognized community based early child care programme, which addresses the basic interrelated needs of young children, expectant and nursing mothers and adolescent girls across the life cycle, in a holistic manner. ICDS is a response to the challenge of breaking a vicious cycle of malnutrition, impaired development, morbidity and mortality in young children, working in convergence with other flagship programmes such as National Rural Health Mission, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and others.

In Rajasthan, the status of malnutrition is similar to other north Indian States and the district which are predominated by tribal have larger problem of malnutrition. Only about 50 percent children in the age group of 0-5 years are in normal grade. This has been highlighted as per the department letter to UNICEF based on which the project for strengthening the services of Aanganbadi Centres (AWCs) has been planned and taken up with support from UNICEF. CDECS has taken up project titled ‘Strengthening of ICDS centres and other related programmes in 2 Blocks each of Banswara & Dungarpur districts’.

The Key objectives of the project are stated hereunder.

To ensure the organization of quality services at AWCs i.e. organization of MCHN days, pre-school education, Growth monitoring, regular growth monitoring, counseling etc.
To improve the functional status of AWCs through using local resources and support from community.
To involve PRIs and community in better functioning of AWCs as per the programme need and community demand.
To facilitate the interface of AWCs with community to drive community support in the working of ASHA and AWW.
To develop AWCs as Child friendly Anganwadi Centres (Child Friendly AWCs).
To form the local level/AWC level support groups namely Matra Samiti (Mother Group) Women /SHGs to support in the quality functioning of AWC.
To further build strong capacity, capability and develop stronger motivation amongst ICDS functionaries namely, LS, AWWs, ASHA and Sahyogani to perform their role in better way tuned with the department perspectives and community demand.
To set an effective monitoring and support system in order to make the ICDS centers function effectively and qualitatively on the activities they supposed to take up.
To document the efforts and processes for improving the delivery in future and scale-up.

Key Project Initiatives

Regular Weighing
Capacity building of ICDS sector and AWC level functionaries
Organization of Quality MCHN days at AWCs
IEC Support (Information Education Communication)
Ensuring AWCs as ‘Child Friendly AWCs
Organizing regularly meetings of Matri Samiti

Project Outcome

The project outcome after successful implementation of project can be summarized as follows:

Effective organization of MCHN days due to active involvement of Cluster Coordinators, Block Coordinator and support of staffs and officials of Health, ICDS etc.
Enhanced skill and capacity amongst ICDS field functionaries and supervisory functionaries.
Proper weighing of children and regular maintenance of records at AWCs.
Better community contact involving mothers, community & PRIs at AWCs due to regular household contact by ASHA and Cluster Coordinators. Also Cluster Coordinators with the support of Lady Supervisor organized PRIs/ Gram Panchayat meeting, Community/ parents meeting, SHGs members meeting and Matri samiti meeting.
Effective monitoring and reporting mechanism was developed by organizing regular meeting at sector and block level.
AWCs’ now started delivering better services viz. organizing Annaprasan and Godbharai during MCHN days, regular weighing, starting pre schooling etc.
The monitoring and management capacity of block level functionaries viz. CDPO and LS has been improved.
Regular meeting of matri samiti has helped in disseminating information about proper child care, services available at AWC i.e. ANC,NC and PNC, immunization etc. among village women.
Community, parents and especially mothers now feel linked to AWCs and they started sending their children to AWCs.