Assessment of safe child friendly environment of day care centres in government and non government organizations of Dhaka city

Abstract

Child rearing is defined as `purposive activities aimed at ensuring the survival and development of children. Urban working mothers, mostly from low-income groups, face great difficulty in terms of accessing child day care services. Most of them are forced to leave their children unattended in their slum dwellings exposing the children to great risk and inadequate nutrition. The solution is only a good day care centre for the children of all working mother. A good day care centre means the centre which can ensure proper child care and having a child friendly environment. As in Bangladesh, the concept of day care is still new, but the good thing is that it is being started. This study was aimed to assess the environment of the day care centres of Dhaka city in both Government and Non Government setting. And at the same time, to evaluate the knowledge of the caregivers about child development in early childhood. Total 10 day care centres were taken as sample and from these centres, 20 caregivers were interviewed. The study showed that only 20% centres were with the facility of a good out door play ground for the children; which is necessary for the urban children for their physical development. 40% centres had appropriate room size for the children and only 20% centres had good child related display or decoration. They had safe drinking water in their centres, but the water management was not really hygienic. Of all, 80% centres were not using separate water glasses for the children. Among the all centres 80% were following their daily routine but only 20% of them were strictly following the routines. Food support is an important item for a day care centre and among 10 day care centres, 40% centres were with good quality food support. As in these 40% centre, they had cooking facility for the children and they also consider children's need and test to prepare food. In the rest 60% centre, mothers were providing food for their children. Among caregivers, 50% had formal training on ECD and they have idea on early childhood development. Assessing their knowledge regarding child development, child rearing and caring, and the caregivers had good knowledge on physical (75% to 80%) and social emotional (60% to 70%) development but they did not have much idea regarding language development (55% to 75%) and cognitive development (only 50% to 55%). The study showed that among the ten studied centers 90% were of average category ( score 96-116) and rest 10% centres were of inadequate category( score 71-95). But as an initiative; the day care viii facilities were relatively good. It is better for the children to stay in day care cantre rather than keeping alone at home. However, still there is scope for further improvement of child friendly environment of the day care centres in our country.