Early Childhood Development Information Campaign for Mothers

The intervention will run an information campaign with mothers on caring of children aged 1-3 years and examine the association between maternal knowledge on child development and developmental outcomes of their children in the short and medium run in a resource poor setting. This will be a randomized controlled trial (RCT) on early childhood development (ECD) implemented in southwestern rural Bangladesh. In particular, mothers who have children in this age range at present will be invited to participate in a set of three information sessions on rearing and caring of 1-3 years old children. Sessions will focus primarily on child nutrition and feeding, hygiene practice in child caring, and home environment favorable to child development. The intervention will be delivered in the mode of specially developed modules of brief curricula through a set of three information sessions. Mothers will learn more about aforesaid topics, and easy and affordable way to translate those into daily practices. Briefly, the curricula will cover 1) aspects of child nutrition and feeding practice i.e. breastfeeding, complementary feeding, balance diet for infant and young and children, way of feeding (frequency, time and attention, utensils used); 2) importance of maintaining hygiene in child caring, daily cleanliness, safe food handling (cooking, serving, and storing food), and overall cleanliness in and around household; 3) immunization of children (i.e. importance and information on total course of nationally available immunization for children); and 4) home environment favorable to child development i.e. parent-child engagement (e.g. talking to, playing with, and where possible reading to children), interaction with elder siblings and other family members, and growth stimulants (e.g. toys, story books for children, physical activity for motor development, taking children out). The intervention will promote optimal and efficient utilization of existing and available resources and services. Fortnightly half-day (four hours), face-to-face group sessions will be facilitated by locally recruited science graduates with a minimum of three years work experience in the field on behavior change communication (BCC). Three half-day (four hours), weekly, face-to-face, refresher group sessions will follow after three months since the commencement of the intervention where previously discussed topics will be revised for better retention of knowledge. Each group will include 6-10 participants. The sessions will be participatory and interactive. Participants would discuss their experience and share knowledge along with learning new information on child development. In one of the treatment arms, informative sessions and refreshers will be complemented by fortnightly home visits by trained facilitators/fieldworkers to support mothers to put learning into practice and observe progress. Therefore, the intervention includes Treatment A: Information sessions + Refresher sessions Treatment B: Information sessions + Refresher sessions + fortnightly Home visits for 6 months. Control group households will be regularly invited to participate in community based cultural events and activities to encourage them to continue their participation in the project.