THE GAMBIA

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THE GAMBIA

• ECD POLICY FRAMEWORK COSTING

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Policy Framework Context

• Population
• Population - 1,364,5071
• Population growth rate - 2.8
• Density - 128 persons per square kilometre.
• Estimate for population of children 0-3 -
  141,000
• Estimate for population of children 3-6 years -
  177,000
• Poverty is on the increase - 50 per cent of the
  Gambian population rated extremely poor and 17
  per cent poor2
• 1 Preliminary results, 2003 Census
• 2 National Poverty Survey, 1998

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Basic services for young children

• Education
• Responsibility of the Department of State for
  Education
• Overall coverage is about 19 for 3-6
• Very young children aged 03 years generally
  missed out on educational interventions
• Coverage in urban - 201 of children and 14 1 in
  rural
• 90 of these centres are provided by the private
  sector and 10 by the community based systems.

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Education(contd)

• Estimate for children in nurseries in 2004 was
  28,000
• .Short term fee charging training programme for
  facilitators
• DOSEs role was limited to monitoring,
  supervision and regulation of services.
• Recently pre-schools are being annexed to
  particularly primary schools
• School-feeding programme supported by the
  world-Food Programme in some Pre-schools in the
  rural areas

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Nutrition

• Mandate for providing regulations for nutrition
  services in the Gambia is with the National
  Nutrition Agency (NaNA
• 4 of children are wasted, 17 undernourished
  and 17 stunted.
• NaNA supports the improvement of nutritional
  status of children 0-5 years through the
• Baby Friendly Community Initiative (BFCI)
• 50,000 children are benefiting

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Nutrition(contd)

• 8 men and women in each of the 500 BFCI
  communities serve as Village Support Group
  members who are trained on the strategy that is
  coverage of 40 .
• Nutrition Surveillance
• Micronutrient supplementation Vitamin A to
  postnatal mothers and children 6 months to 5
  years. Coverage is 52.3 .
• Salt Iodisation Target is 80 consumption of
  iodised salt. Coverage not known

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Water Supply

• Responsibility of Department of Community
  Development
• Assumption is that children within all
  communities with water supply have access to safe
  water
• 70 of the population have access to safe water
  supply
• Over 40 of the population have access to proper
  sanitation.

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Health

• Responsibility of Department of State for Health
• Provision and maintenance of quality health
  services for children includes
• Expanded Programme on Immunisation (EPI) e.g
  against Hepatitis B, Haemophilus influenza type,
  Tuberculosis, Diphtheria, tetanus, pertursis and
  poliomyelitis.
• Coverage for immunisation is over 80 .

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Health(contd)

• Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) services
  vaccination of antenatal mothers against Tetanus
  toxoid (coverage is 72 ), growth monitoring,
  screening of children, Birth Registration, health
  education and.
• Coverage for growth monitoring of children age 0
  -18months is 80
• Birth Registration, screening and health
  education is not known

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Health

• Integrated Management of Childhood Illnesses
  (IMCI)
• coverage is 35, 000 children in CRD and LRD
  benefit from this strategy
• Paediatric services are also available for
  children, which include among others, the
  provision of paediatric drugs and paediatricians.
  Coverage not known
• Prevention of parent to child transmission of
  HIV/Aids. Coverage is 13 facilities including 4
  private facilities.
• N.B Other key providers of ECDare CCF, GAFNA,
  Department of State for Agriculture

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Need for an Early Childhood Development Policy

• A National meeting on ECD involving all
  stakeholders held in the Gambia 1999 as above,
  highlighted shortcomings in
• Access
• Quality
• Cohesion
• The Working Group on ECD that emerged out of the
  resolutions of this meeting identified the need
  for a policy to address gaps in access, quality
  and cohesion
• Unicef resourced the expertise of a consultant to
  facilitate the policy development process in 2002.

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Need for an Early Childhood Development Policy
(contd)

• Policy has, however, not reached cabinet level
  for many reasons
• One is lack of attached cost

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The ECD Policy Framework Costing exercise in The
Gambia

• Mr. Alain Mingat supported this process in The
  Gambia from 5th to 9th December 2005 through the
  support of ADEA and /UNICEF Regional Office for
  West Africa after the ECD Policy Financing
  meeting held in Dakar in March 2005. The Gambia
  is grateful to ADEA and UNICEF for this worthy
  venture.

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The Costing Exercise involved

• Consultations with the heads (Permanent
  Secretaries of Health, Education, Local
  Government ECD Multi-sectoral Working Group in
  The Gambia to
• - Glean relevant statistics to use in building
  the model
• - Report on current provisions and levels of
  coverage
• - Convergence on a nature of provision and
  coverage levels envisaged for this policy.

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Major Challenge

• Accessing reliable data from relevant sectors
• concerns of underestimation e.g
• data on service coverage
• overestimation e.g census data
• total absence of data e.g salaries.

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The policy costing Aim

• Advocate for appropriate budgetary consideration
  for services for young children
• 0-3 years, 3-6 years and communities

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Principles underlying the Policy Framework

• Enhanced access for the poorest and
  underprivileged young children and families
• Build on existing structures and sectoral polices
• Integration for efficient use of resources

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Costing of Policy(contd)

• Based on two distinct grouping of provisions
• Contextual services i.e conventional services by
  Departments of State such as Health and Social
  Welfare, Education, National Nutrition
  Agency,Water Resources, and Community Development
• Focus is co-ordination to ensure
  comprehensiveness in the policy
• These have no funding implications within this
  policy framework

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Policy costing based on

• Specific activities new activities representing
  gaps in contextual services
• The focus is expansion and improvement of
  contextual services
• Activities through which the objectives of the
  policy can be achieved by 2015
• These have funding implications

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Elements in the model

• Population figures for 2004 to 2015
• Agreed coverage for the different age groups
• Real costs and total revenue to be realised from
  2004 to 2015
• Scenerios created to adjust for affordability by
  making for trade-offs between coverage and
  quality
• Levels of funding that can be mobilised from the
  Education budget and the other sectors such as
  Health, Department of Community Development, NaNA
  and Water Resources are indicated as percentage
  of the GDP of the country.
• Flexible to allow for development of other
  scenarios

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Scenarios 
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The next crucial steps

• Development of implementation plan with specific
  activities for attainment of the stated
  objectives children 0-3 and 3-6 years by the year
  2015
• Adoption

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Should we invest? Why?

• There are positive gains for supporting the
  policy
• Enrolment into the primary sector
• Retention to completion levels
• Improved performance by systems
• Improved outcomes for overall education section
• Greater productivity in the workforce
• Achievements of EFA, PRSP goals
• Achivement of national ambitions for 2020

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Conclusion

• Lack of investment mean a lost opportunity for
  our 2015 targets
• It is great wisdom to invest in constructing
  children
• It is expensive to reconstruct damaged adults.
  This just what excluding ECD means