Social Development
[1] What progress has his Department made thus far with early childhood development;
[2] whether a comprehensive programme is in place for early childhood development; if so, what are the relevant details?
[1] The Department has prioritised ECD as a means towards achieving the outcomes of the Provincial Strategic Goal of ‘Improving education outcomes and opportunities for youth development’ and PSG 3: “Increasing Wellness” which speaks of addressing the health and nutrition issues of children.
The Provincial ECD Integrated Strategy is being implemented in collaboration with amongst others the Department of Education, Health, City of Cape Town and experts in the NGO ECD sector. These are some of the stakeholders that have been part of the development of the strategy. The strategy is in the process of being reviewed in light of the new National ECD policy.
The department has substantially increased out-of-centre or home and community based programmes and has invested in the provision of quality, developmentally appropriate centre-based ECD programmes that promote care, protection and development.
A total of 32 Service organisations are funded to provide quality age appropriate ECD programmes throughout the province. ECD services provided include; outreach programmes in a format of home and community based programmes, play groups, toy libraries, space based ECD programme, learning programme and capacity building and mentoring and support to ensure compliance. Training of 1743 ECD practitioners on the development and implementation of quality ECD programme has also taken priority as it is in response to the requirements of the Children’s Act on programme registration. Parental involvement in ECD has also become paramount and parents and caregivers are capacitated on the importance of ECD.
A total of 76492 children access registered and funded ECD programmes and services and 7753children access funded After School Care programmes.
[2] The implementation of the Provincial ECD Integrated Strategy provides for the provision of comprehensive ECD programmes. The departments involved in the development of the integrated strategy have collaborated in the provisioning of programmes (as per implementation plan in the strategy document). Rollout of the ECD 0-4 curriculum and ECD programme registration, nutrition training workshops and nutrition manual development, the First 1000 days campaign are some of the provisioning efforts resulting from interdepartmental collaboration.
Overall in collaboration with other government departments and partnerships with the NPO sector a range of developmental programmes ranging from learning programmes, nutrition programmes, centre-based programmes, non-centre based programmes and parenting programmes are in place.
A special programme focussing developing a specialised quality ECD programme in 100 where school readiness is poor has been initiated by the Department.
The programme focusses on;
- Language development and cognitive development.
- Establish support system for parents of children at the 100 sites to better equip them to stimulate the same learning within the home in order to reinforce the learning happening within the registered centres
- Establish a monitoring system to track baseline and end line impact on school readiness in the pilot cohort
The project was launched is being piloted with pre-grade R children in 10 ECD facilities, spread through Metro South, East and Cape Winelands during 2016/17
