Why invest in very young children?

According to Nobel Laureate James Heckman, “investing in disadvantaged young children is a rare public policy that not only promotes productivity, but also fairness and social justice”. The advantages of quality early childhood programming are greatest for the most vulnerable children, and most cost-effective during their earliest years. Professor Jack Shonkoff, Director of Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, asserts that on average, the investment in adolescents and adults for essential skills and capacities ordinarily developed in the first three years, is as much as seven greater than the earlier investment would have been.

Why are very young children so ‘‘special’’?

Young children are especially vulnerable in the first eight most formative years of life. By the same token these years present enormous potential. Lifelong neural pathways are shaped through the quality of the child’s earliest interactions when the infant brain is most pliable. Children are nurtured through responsive, secure, stimulating care, adequate nutrition, safe living conditions and preventative healthcare. But these dimensions can be disrupted by a myriad of environmental influences – deprivations, traumas, and shocks. Healthy early experiences impact adult capabilities and opportunities, positively influencing educational attainment, health outcomes, successful relationships and income; and inversely influencing dependence on social services, family disintegration and criminal activity.

Furthermore, poverty and under-development in home environments, including family illiteracy and limited opportunities to play and explore, has a profound impact on child development: disadvantaged children enter primary school so far behind their better-off peers that it is virtually impossible for them to catch up.

So what does this mean for your interest in young children in South Africa?

South African children are among the most vulnerable in the world. According to Linda Biersteker, Research Director at the Early learning Research Unit in Cape Town, 66% of South African children live in dire poverty, and 20% of families in the population are child-headed. The survivalist nature of a poor existence means that parents (especially child parents) and caregivers spend a substantial portion of their time working in insecure conditions or seeking “piece” work and informal/unsafe/insecure occasional employment. This leaves them little time to attend to their children’s needs. And to aggravate these circumstances, families spend largely on survival – food and shelter – with little left for longer term developmental investments such as formal and informal educational and play opportunities (where most learning occurs among children under five years of age), and for bonding and socialisation.

Only 20% (1.5 M) of poor South African children receive early childhood development services and these are largely cognitive (ignoring health, nutrition, social & emotional development etc), in often less than adequate environments3. Thus, 80% (4.5M) of poor South African children receive no pre-school services at all (except for immunization which has good coverage), a situation which sets the path for poor performance throughout school and into adulthood. Furthermore, it clearly demonstrates how poverty becomes inter-generational with poor children in each generation not having the means to escape deprived circumstances and replaying the circumstances for their own children.

Another critical point is that before age 3, when most essential life skill capabilities are at a crucial stage of development, children are served best at home (where possible and appropriate), in individual play-based relationships with dedicated caregivers or in small intimate playgroups where facilitators can provide sufficient individual attention to the child’s needs. A home-based parent/child interaction programme which supports parents/caregivers can provide a holistic and quality child development programme for under five year-olds, at no cost to the parent and without involving travel, which in South Africa is inordinately costly, cumbersome and unreliable. Given the coverage of ECD centres in the country (20% largely in urban contexts), a young child almost always needs to travel extensively to access such a service. Since most children are home-based at least until 3, their seclusion inadvertently exposes them to risk as there is no monitoring of the child’s holistic development.

A home-visiting programme such as HIPPY, in addition to its play and learn provisions, creates a social safety net ensuring that health, psycho-social, nutritional, protection and shelter needs of the child is monitored and addressed where necessary.