The Impact of Accompanying Families for the Development of the Most Vulnerable Children

Programs working with families through group visits and/or group sessions have shown significant impacts on children's development - both in the short term through cognitive and language improvements and in adulthood through improved academic and work performance.

Conceptualizing and implementing programs of this type from scratch can be costly and challenging, especially considering that there are numerous experiences in several Latin American and Caribbean countries. That is why we wonder if it is possible to design strategies to improve existing services and raise their quality. In this post, we share the results of the evaluation of the program Family, Women and Children (FAMI, for its acronym in Spanish) in Colombia. What does the program consist of and how does it impact the lives of children? We tell you about it below.

FAMI: A Program to Improve the Upbringing and Development of Children in Colombia

FAMI is operated by the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF) and serves more than one-third of the families with vulnerable children in their first two years of life and pregnant women. It offers group sessions and home visits to improve parenting practices and interactions, in addition to strengthening mothers' self-esteem and self-efficacy. Some of the strategies used are spaces and activities for playing and reading, pictures to promote conversation and singing songs.

With the aim of strengthening the implementation of the program, Universidad de los Andes, in collaboration with Grand Challenges Canada, University College London and Fundación Éxito, designed, implemented and evaluated a package of improvements. These included the incorporation of a curriculum of structured play activities and materials to develop them -including books, puzzles, blocks, sorting and matching objects-, as well as a training program and continuous support for FAMI mothers, the facilitators, through tutors (mentors).

In addition, the nutritional content of the program was adjusted, which included the promotion of breastfeeding and adequate complementary feeding. For more than 10 months, 46 of the 87 randomly selected FAMI centers implemented these changes in the departments of Boyacá, Cundinamarca and Santander.

Improved Cognitive, Language, and Motor Development of Children as the Main Results

Study findings speak for themselves. The cognitive, language and motor development of the children in the FAMIs where the package was implemented improved significantly in comparison to the children who did not receive the changes in the service: the impacts obtained in cognition are equivalent to a 23% reduction in the existing gap in cognitive development between households of different socioeconomic levels in Bogota. Likewise, a reduction of 5.8 percentage points was observed in children at risk of stunting. In addition, by promoting mothers' self-efficacy, self-esteem and education, parenting practices were also improved.

The results show that by training the local human resources in charge of implementing the services with clear, simple and structured tools, it is possible to improve service quality and its impact on beneficiary families. Even more so if, as was the case with the FAMI mothers, they are open and receptive to learning and incorporating other ways of doing things, with the help of a mentor who assists them in the planning and offers them ongoing support.

Family Support Programs: High Impact at a Relatively Low Cost

Another important lesson from this experience is that upgrading programs such as FAMI is not excessively costly. In this case, the additional cost of the pedagogical package and the training and ongoing support was 40% of the cost of the original FAMI model. Adding the nutritional component doubled the cost of the program. That said, given the positive impact of the program, when comparing the cost of its implementation in relation to other programs in the country -such as the construction of child development centers is cost-effective.

The FAMI experience shows that it is possible to innovate from existing programs and achieve great transformations. It is necessary to retake and strengthen these practices, improve them and structure them so that early childhood programs do not leave the most vulnerable families behind. A simple "toolbox" with activities, materials and the right support can change the lives of many children and take them a long way.

Do you know of similar experiences in other countries in the region? Tell us in the comments section!

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