THE answers to the country’s societal challenges lie in early childhood.

This was the finding of the latest Child Gauge 2024, released last week, as it said that was the direction to go in for South Africa’s complex challenges.

“With nurturing care and the proactive support of families, communities, and the whole of society we can protect young children from harm, enable them to thrive and build a strong foundation for national development,” said the annual report, the 17th produced by the University of Cape Town’s Children’s Institute.

The report, published to monitor progress towards realising children’s rights, this year focused attention on early childhood development and reflected on progress since the adoption of the National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy in 2015.

It also looked towards setting an agenda for 2030.

The report was delivered by Dr Tshepo Motsepe, who is the patron of the South African Civil Society for Women’s, Adolescents’ and Children’s Coalition (SACSOWACH).

From the report she said: “Investment in early childhood development matters, not just for children today, but because it boosts their lifelong health, education and employment prospects.”

The report said for society to break free from intergenerational cycles of poverty, violence and ill-health, and to boost national development, South Africa had to focus its efforts on the sensitive period of early childhood, for investment to be most effective.

The report spoke of the importance of the National Integrated Early Childhood Development Policy and said it highlighted the important role of the health sector in ensuring the well-being of mothers and the optimal development of children, especially during the first 1 000 days of life – from conception until a child’s second birthday.

“The policy envisages an expanded role for the health sector, with the sector expected to contribute to early childhood development not only through improving the coverage and quality of existing health and nutrition services and interventions, but also through introduction of additional interventions to ensure the current and future well-being of mothers and children,” read the report.

It also said the health sector had significant experience in the provision of survival-focused services, which overlapped into risk factors for child survival and development. “Many of these traditional health sector interventions already contribute towards ensuring that mothers and children thrive.”

Among targeted interventions the report prescribed are interventions for at risk communities, among them children and adults, who are affected by poverty, undernutrition, adolescent pregnancy, HIV, violence.

“The aim would be to reduce the damaging effects of stress and deprivation, and to strengthen individuals’ capacity to cope.”

Health interventions were important, the report found, and they needed to be coupled with broader efforts to address the rise in child poverty. “This as nearly 40% of children now live below the food poverty line,” it said, adding that the restoration of the Child Support Grant so that it covered children’s nutritional needs had to be considered.

The institute, in the report, also called for the removal of administrative barriers to the registration of early learning programmes so that more children were able to benefit from the Early Childhood Development subsidy.

This, it said, should be in addition to other national measures in place in the country, which are meant to strengthen social assistance. “At the same time, it is important to address the commercial drivers of child malnutrition and the ways in which the marketing, sale and consumption of cheap ultra-processed foods is driving a rapid increase in overweight and obesity.”

The health sector needed to expand its vision and approach to service delivery while it ensured that all pregnant mothers and young children had access to a package of essential health and nutrition services. “It is encouraging to note that coverage of most of these interventions increased between 2016/17 and 2022/23, although access to HIV treatment, as measured by antiretroviral therapy coverage and exclusive breastfeeding rates remain low.”

The need for universal interventions to be provided through all services that families of young children used most, to include care for caregivers; specialised services for families or children with identified needs, to include young children without caregivers, children living with depressed mothers or in violent homes, children with very low birthweight, and children living with disabilities and/or developmental difficulties; and those with severe malnutrition were emphasised.

Some of these were covered in the National Development Plan 2030, which calls for implementation of a comprehensive approach to early childhood development by developing and expanding existing child survival programmes.

Important outcomes, according to the report, would include reductions in maternal, infant and child mortality.

ntando.makhubu@inl.co.za