Family Support For Nurturing Care

The key to equalising the rights of all children to ensure they develop to their full potential is nurturing care. Every child must receive nurturing care from their parents, families, and caregivers. Government is duty-bound to ensure that all parents, families, and caregivers are enabled and empowered to provide nurturing care.

The legacy of apartheid and subsequent crises, including COVID 19, have disenabled and disempowered the majority of parents and families. It is critical that South Africa develop a comprehensive, developmental child care and protection system that provides families and parents with the combination of services and support they need to overcome the risks and challenges preventing them from providing their children with nurturing care.

Goals

To strengthen the system of integrated and comprehensive support provided to parents, families, and caregivers to enable their provision of nurturing care to secure the development of children in their care to their full potential.

Objectives

To strengthen government-wide operationalisation of the National Child Care and Protection Policy and the National Integrated ECD Policy to increase the availability of, and access to family-strengthening services to address risks to children’s survival, development, protection, and participation.
Strengthen the enabling legal framework mandating government-wide provision of integrated services required to build resilience and capacity of parents, families, and caregivers to provide nurturing care to promote children’s development and prevent abuse and poor development outcomes.
Strengthen the sustained availability of and equitable access to essential programmes providing quality services that are necessary to enable the provision of nurturing care, including:
1. Health and nutrition for development and prevention of disability and stunting; and
2. Parenting support for responsive caregiving.
Strengthen human resources capacity for child-centered developmental planning, provisioning, resourcing, monitoring, and system’s strengthening.
Increased allocation of public resources to support implementation of a package of promotive and preventative support services for enabling nurturing care.
Strengthen information management and monitoring systems to ensure:
The identification of families and children at risk and their referral for support
The monitoring and reporting of family / caregiver access to the package of support required to enable nurturing care and children’s access to all nurturing care domains
The dissemination and use of data by all role players to improve planning and provisioning for support for nurturing care.

Strategic Interventions

Our family support objectives and goal will be pursued through the following key activities:

We will work to strengthen government-wide systematisation of the National Child Care and Protection Policy and the National Integrated ECD through:
1. A critical review of progress to date in systematising the two policies, identify gaps and recommendations for strengthening the systems
2. Research as to the support vulnerable families require in South Africa’s current socio-economic context to overcome their risks and challenges to provide nurturing care
3. Regular strategic sharing of review and research and the development of a shared systems strengthening advocacy agenda
4. Development and distribution of policy and advocacy briefs
5. Advocacy at global, regional, national, provincial, and local levels for implementation of system’s strengthening measures.
Advocating for the adoption of effective laws mandating government-wide actioning of policy commitments to build resilience and capacity of parents, families and caregivers to promote children’s development and prevent abuse and poor development outcomes through:
1. Review of current legislation to identify key legal impediments preventing implementation of policy commitments
2. Consultations with the sector to review research results and develop legal amendments to strengthen the enabling environment
3. Advocacy at global, regional, national, provincial and local levels for strengthening the enabling legal framework for nurturing care.
Advocating for the development and delivery of critical developmentally promotive and preventative services currently not provided:
Health and nutrition for development and prevention of disability and stunting
Parenting support for responsive caregiving.
Advocating for improvements in human resources for developmental planning, provision, monitoring and quality improvement of services to support nurturing care through:
1. A review of current capacity and development of recommendations for strengthening the workforce for nurturing care
2. Advocacy at global, regional, national, provincial and local levels for implementation of the recommendations.
Advocating for the increased allocation of public resources to support implementation of a package of promotive and preventative support services for nurturing care through:
1. Regular reviews of national, provincial and local budgets for promotive and preventative services for nurturing care
2. Advocacy for increased and equitable allocations in the national, provincial and local budgets to implement the programme of family support for nurturing care.
Advocating for strengthened information management and monitoring systems through:
1. A review of current information management and oversight systems and development of recommendations for strengthening this systemic building block
2. Advocacy at global, regional, national, provincial and local levels for implementation of the recommendations.