238964 Child Status Index: A Key Monitoring Tool in Tracking the Well-being of Most Vulnerable Children and Enhancing Service Delivery in two states of Southern Nigeria

Wednesday, November 2, 2011: 11:10 AM

Chinelo Odiakosa, M&E Specialist - BSc, MSc in View , USAID funded Community Based Support for OVC Project (CUBS), Management Sciences for Health (MSH), Rivers State, Nigeria
Background: Most African children are vulnerable to risks. Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC) are the worst hit, those who, due to certain characteristics, are at a considerably higher risk than their local peers. Escalated by TB/HIV/AIDS, OVC in Nigeria was estimated at 17.5m in 2008 (FMWASD). With this phenomenal increase, it seemed difficult to ascertain most-vulnerable-children, monitor their health and serve them with quality services. How was the Child Status Index (CSI) tool applied to address these challenges?

Description: USAID-funded CUBS, a Management Sciences for Health project provides community-based support to OVC in 11 states of Nigeria. From all OVC enrolled into the programme - 2457 males and 2361 females between August to December 2010 in Rivers and Akwa-Ibom states, the CSI was used to screen OVC for service delivery across 6 domains namely psychosocial, Health, Education, protection, Food & Nutrition and Shelter& Care by rating their well-being using scores 1 to 4, 1 being “very bad” and 4 being “good”. Services were thereafter channeled to most-vulnerable children scoring 1 and 2 in each domain.

Results: With the CSI, all OVC enrolled received routine psychosocial-support, 7 OVC were referred for health services, 704 females and 597 male OVC were served with Basic Care Kits, thus, close monitoring on the health of the child was achieved, linking them to services need-oriented and referrals made easy.

Lessons learnt: Adopting the CSI tool in TB/HIV/AIDS programs enhances health-care delivery to the OVC and can serve as a veritable tool in the early referral of childhood illnesses

Learning Areas:
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Program planning
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health

Learning Objectives:
To describe how the Child Status Index tool can be used to ascertain most-vulnerable children as well as prove to be a veritable tool in routinely monitoring OVC for health risks, referrals and service delivery

Keywords: Access and Services, Child Health Promotion

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: Chinelo works in the Community Based Support for OVC project in Management Sciences for Health (MSH) and functions as the M&E Specialist for two states - Rivers and Akwa Ibom - Southern Nigeria of which she gathered her data. She was initially the Community Care Specialist for MSH in Kebbi state - Northern Nigeria where she gained experiences that helped in shaping her present work. Alongside her work, Chinelo is presently a student of Walden University, Masters in Psychology (Program Evaluation and Research). The work presented was a Program implementation under the CUBS project where she also gathers her findings towards her Project/research work in school.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.

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