In October 2018 a delegation from Mozambique participated in a multi-country stakeholders’ consultation to operationalize the Nurturing Care Framework within the health sector (more details on the meeting here).
In March 2019 the Ministry of Social Affairs, in collaboration with partners, introduced the Nurturing Care Framework and defined roles at national and provincial levels. The Framework was viewed as a positive resource for helping the government and partners harmonize their approach to early childhood development (ECD), and informing partners’ support programmes (UNICEF, PATH and the National ECD Network).
ECD activities based on the Nurturing Care Framework and related to health and nutrition have been included in the Ministry of Health annual workplan. The Nurturing Care Framework has also informed the Child and Young Feeding national policy and the inclusion of pre-primary into the National Education Law and the Education Sector Plan.
In April 2019 the Ministry of Health convened a Technical Working Group meeting to identify how to include ECD within efforts to upgrade the curriculum for physiotherapy and thus how to strengthen the health system to include nurturing care elements for children with disabilities. A workplan and next steps were agreed upon.
In May 2019 the Ministry of Health held another Technical Working Group meeting, which was attended by Ministry of Health representatives covering MNCH, Nutrition, M&E and Logistics; UN agencies (UNICEF & UNFPA) and PATH. The purpose of the meeting was to review and update MCH supervision tools so that they included ECD.
