The Hindu : New Delhi News : A new centre for child care, healthy parenting

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Sunday, May 11, 2008
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New Delhi

A new centre for child care, healthy parenting

Special Correspondent

To provide focused information for child welfare, nutrition for toddlers and train resource persons

Photo: Gopal Sunger

New arrival: Rajasthan Women and Child Development Minister Kanakmal Katara (right) looking at the material displayed at the new Child Development and Nutrition Resource Centre in Jaipur.

JAIPUR: A new Child Development and Nutrition Resource Centre, launched here earlier this week, will provide focused and rapidly usable information and other resources for early child care and development and nutrition for toddlers to promote healthy parenting among young couples and train the resource persons working in the rural areas.

The centre – the first of its kind in Jaipur – is expected to make a significant contribution to social mobilisation on health care for children and facilitate execution of the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS), besides providing counselling to the stakeholders.

The Concerned Citizens for Development and Nutrition (CCDN) has established the centre under the aegis of the Rajasthan branch of the Indian Council for Child Welfare. Its emphasis as part of healthy practices will be on immunisation, birth spacing and good parenting.

State Women and Child Development Minister Kanakmal Katara, inaugurating the resource centre, said the need for it was being felt since long for making an effective intervention on behalf of the community to support government efforts for welfare of children. “The centre’s work for sensitisation of people is going to be very helpful for the State Government,” he added.

CCDN Director and resource centre’s convenor Raj Bhandari said the centre would serve as a storehouse of all available recorded information on child development, nutrition, breastfeeding and health care. UNICEF has supplied the entire resource material for the centre. Dr. Bhandari – a practising paediatrician – pointed out that the user-friendly information made available through hand-outs, flash cards and educational charts would be especially beneficial for resource persons dealing with the rural population. “The crèche workers are finding our counselling and training very helpful in fulfilling their responsibilities,” he said.

Networking

The Indian Council for Child Welfare is running 149 crèches across the State for the children of working or ailing mothers from the lower socio-economic strata. Dr. Bhandari said the resource centre’s training to crèche workers would help improve their integrated services covering health, sanitation and nutrition aspects.

The resource centre also proposes to provide a platform for networking with the professionals such as paediatricians and nutritionists, non-government organisations, policy-makers and community leaders. Dr. Bhandari expressed the hope that the centre would shortly emerge as a “child welfare hub” bridging the gaps and enhancing the capacity of stakeholders.

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