November 2023 – Early childhood years are critical years for human growth and development. This period is when the brain develops most rapidly, and also a time when the neural connections formed set the stage for a child’s physical, mental health and lifelong wellness. For children to reach their development potential, they need nurturing care, that is, the conditions that enable communities and caregivers to ensure their good health, nutrition, security, safety, responsive caregiving and opportunities for early learning.

To enhance Early Childhood Development (ECD) and realize the full potential for its young children, the Kenya Ministry of Health Divisions with the financial and technical support of UNICEF Kenya developed the Social Behaviour Change Communication Strategy on Nurturing Care for Early Childhood Development 2023-2026 (NCfECD SBCC strategy). This strategy seeks to improve knowledge, attitudes and behaviours such as the adoption of appropriate nurturing care practices by caregivers of children under eight years and their social influencers. This strategy has been developed to aid national and county-level multi-sectoral stakeholders in implementing social and behaviour change communication interventions on nurturing care in the country. These stakeholders include those representing, but are not limited to the following sectors – health, nutrition, agriculture, education, child and social protection, water and gender.

Social and Behaviour Change Communication is an interactive, researched and planned process aimed at changing social conditions and individual behaviours. In preparation of this strategy, the stakeholders utilized the Keystone Framework, a systemic approach to program design that helped teams to diagnose the nurturing care needs, decide where to most effectively intervene, design user-centred interventions and sustainably deliver measurable impact. 

The strategic priority areas include Good Health and Adequate Nutrition, Opportunities for Early Learning, Responsive Caregiving, and Safety and Security. Various SBCC approaches aimed at addressing the identified barriers and seeking to satisfy the individual insights from the Human Centred Design (HCD) iteration process for the targeted audiences will be implemented at different levels, that is, at individual level directly targeting the primary audience, at community level to address the social and cultural barriers and also at a macro level influencing the country level decision makers who lead ECD policy formulation, financing and program monitoring.

Read the full NCfECD SBCC strategy here.