The Essential Package (EP): Holistically Addressing the Needs of Young Vulnerable Children and Their Caregivers Affected by HIV and AIDS

Developed by the HIV/AIDS Working Group/The Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF), the Essential Package (EP) is a group of developed and validated tools and frameworks that can be used as a guide for programme managers, service providers, policy makers, and parents to meet the needs of young children, particularly those affected or infected by HIV/AIDS, to reach their optimal development from birth to age eight.

The Essential Package consists of three components:

• A literature review, Distinct Disadvantage: A Review of Children Under 8 and the HIV/AIDS Epidemic that provides the rationale for mainstreaming ECD into programming for children affected by HIV/AIDS;
• Frameworks that highlight the critical needs of young children and their caregivers in the context of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and social isolation, with recommended actions to meet these needs in the areas of care and development, health, nutrition, child rights/protection, and family livelihoods; and
• A Tool Kit to support the integration of ECD programming for CABA, including an online clearinghouse for articles, volunteer and program staff guides, evaluation tools and other pertinent information for program design and implementation (see below).

EP Toolkit components include:

•     "Situational Analysis provides guidance on how to map the local resources and services that are currently available within a community as well as identify gaps and potential solutions.
• Community Mobilization Guide describes the step by step process to inform key stakeholders on the new activities of addressing young children’s needs and their caregivers within an HIV/AIDS context.
• Frameworks highlight the critical needs of young children and their caregivers within an HIV/AIDS context and the essential actions at the volunteer level to address these needs.
• Visual Guide is a pictorial guide to be used by paraprofessionals to provide key messages to the caregivers on the critical needs of young children and their caregivers and suggested actions for addressing these needs. The guide also provides reflection questions to assist the home visitor in identifying the key needs within the household and probes to better understand the household situation. The guide is accompanied by Guidance Notes provided to program managers to further explain why these areas are critical to promoting optimal child development. PLEASE NOTE: a template will be posted shortly that is easily adaptable i.e.  ability to change pictures/suggested actions to best fit the cultural context.
• Visual Guide - Caregivers
• Visual Guide - Children
• Program Manager Implementation Guide outlines roles and responsibilities of the program manager and community agents as well as guidance around monthly reflection meetings in order to gather data and monitor the volunteers and how well they are effectively using the tools.
• Monitoring and Evaluation Framework highlights the inputs, activities, outputs, indicators and outcomes at the levels of child, caregiver and caregiving environment.
• Comprehensive Checklist is used for Baseline and Endline data collection in order to track changes over time. The checklist identifies barriers, opportunities and assets that are available in a household and captures data on socioeconomic status, caregiving status, child status, and the caregiving environment.
• Policy Brief provides information on why addressing ECD in HIV and AIDS contexts matters, what the research says, policy implications, and examples of strategies for advocacy.

    To be posted:

•     Training Manual for Volunteers on ECD to be used by a qualified trainer to facilitate a 5-day training with volunteers on the importance of ECD, the tools being used, and how to effectively incorporate ECD into home based care. (NOTE: development of the training manual is underway based on ongoing trainings and will be available later this year)
• Online Clearing House for Materials Related to ECD & HIV and AIDS will provide a centralized location where any articles, reports, materials and other documents pertaining to ECD in HIV contexts will be housed and easily accessed by program managers, organizations, policy makers and others interested in addressing this issue"

This toolkit, funded by the Hilton Foundation, has been an effort of the Consultative Group on Early Childhood Care and Development as an umbrella group for the HIV/AIDS Working Group/IATF, organised in cooperation with Save the Children and CARE, USA.