1

Early Childhood Development (0-4) Project

Early Childhood Development (0-4) Project

Presentation to Renewal Workshop12/13 March 2007

Dr. Miriam AltmanExecutive Director

Employment, Growth & Development InitiativeHuman Sciences Research Council

maltman@hsrc.ac.za altmanm@mweb.co.za

2

HSRC emphasis:Linking employment to social delivery

HSRC emphasis:Linking employment to social delivery

• Objective: Substantial job creation• through responsible expansion of community based “care”

services• procured by government

• AIDS-sensitive but not AIDS-specific• Government has committed to providing ECD services (0-

4) to all poor children by 2009. Committed large financial resources and willing to commit more if capacity demonstrated

• HSRC calculated potential creation of 340,000 net new jobs.

• Programmes under design at much smaller scale.

• Roll-out has been slow, in part because ECD sector very fragmented and weak

3

Programme elementsProgramme elements

• Best practice developing country case studies in scaling up community based social welfare services to some minimum standards.

• Background investigations on SA context

• Identifying alternative institutional models that might be tested through demonstration project:

• Alternative job hierarchies in ECD provision and supervision, and the fit of low skill service providers.

• Alternative institutional models to enable scaling up in context of fragmentation and capacity constraints.

• Knowledge sharing through round-tables and web based document coordination

4

Programme elements:demonstration projectProgramme elements:demonstration project

• Demonstration project –• Purpose: to test alternative

approaches identified • Elements (over 5 years)

• Identify sites and implementation partners

• Identify delivery model to be tested• Including job hierarchies, home vs

centre based, etc

• Monitoring and evaluation key• Capacity development• Impact assessment and indicators

5

Research issuesResearch issues

• Targeting• Implementation structures: roles of govt,

NGOs, CBOs, private providers• Alternative program design• Potential for auxiliary activities• Capacity needed for scaling up• Policy processes around implementation

6

Project structure and partnersProject structure and partners

• Project overseen by reference committee convened by the Dept of Education, and comprised of social departments, provincial reps, Unicef, other experts.

• Implementation: HSRC, provincial agency responsible for ECD (0-4) funding, local NGOs and CBOs implementing