Early childhood development: the children can’t wait

UNICEF’s recently published Building Better Brains: New Frontiers in Early Childhood Development provides a summary of the latest science on the link between ECD and development. It confirms that the development of children is compromised when they are born into extreme poverty; into violent households which use corporal punishment or do not have access to basic health care, services and food and nutrition; and when they do not enjoy close and nurturing parenting or quality early childhood education.

Their development is at risk because these factors affect the growth of their brains.

However, poor outcomes are not inevitable for the country’s most vulnerable young children if their environments are changed by making sure they are provided with the correct bundle of services at the right stage of their development - that is in the first three years, starting from before birth.

The essential package of services includes:

•nutritional education and support

•sanitation and water

•safety

•positive and nurturing parenting by mothers and fathers

•stimulating play and early learning from birth in the home, community and in early childhood education centres.

South Africa’s most disadvantaged children will have an equal opportunity to develop to their full potential if these services are provided.

ECD services for the most vulnerable children are key to turning the tide against poverty and inequality.

The evidence, however, shows that in South Africa the majority of children in the poorest and most under-serviced communities, where the need for quality ECD services is highest, do not receive these services, thus locking them into a negative cycle of inequality and poverty.

The Department of Performance, Monitoring and Evaluation’s recent Report of the Seminar on Evidence and Children (June 2015) confirms again that children living in under-serviced rural areas are far more likely to be excluded from ECD services.

The draft national ECD policy seeks to remedy this by prioritising the public provision of ECD services to children living in poverty and in under-serviced areas. However, the policy has not yet been adopted, and there is an urgent need for these children to be provided with essential ECD services as soon as possible. They cannot and should not wait until we have a policy and the associated machinery is put in place.

There is no need to wait for the policy. There is a clear and strong Constitutional and legislative mandate already in place for local governments to provide or support the provision of a number of key ECD services, especially in poor and under-serviced communities.

Local government is required to plan for and provide services for the social and economic development of its communities, including the parents, caregivers and children in these communities, basic water and sanitation services, day care services, play parks and recreation facilities, and book and toy libraries.

As such they are duty-bound and it is in their interest to secure the provision of key ECD services for all, especially the most impoverished children, through the local planning and budgeting processes in the local Integrated Development Plan (IDP).

It is essential that all IDPs in South Africa recognise and make the connection between local government’s developmental mandate and the need for universal provision, by local government, of key ECD services which it has the power to provide. Few IDPs do so at present.

At a minimum, IDPs should reflect the number and location of young children and their specific ECD needs and the associated services that local government must provide.

For this to happen, ECD has to be elevated to a priority issue on local government’s political agenda – but how?

There is a crucial window of opportunity right now. There will be local government elections next year and the early childhood development sector must ensure that ECD is on the election platform and that promises are made and carried through in the IDP planning processes.

Local traditional leaders play a very influential role in determining what is prioritised by local government, the prevailing local and parental attitudes, and in the allocation of local resources. Thus, traditional leaders must become partners in promoting early childhood development if we are to meet the policy imperative to prioritise ECD services for children living in poverty in rural areas.

Martin is Ilifa Labantwana consultant and early childhood development policy advocate. Views expressed are not necessarily those of GroundUp.