Need to review child development screening test, study finds |06 March 2017

A study to monitor the development outcome of children using the current development screening test in the child health programme of the Ministry of Health has revealed that it needs to be reviewed to improve the reliability in administration and validity in the interpretation of the results.

This is only but one recommendation of the study conducted to capture and analyse child development outcome data from the Denver Development Screening Test (DDST), to establish the achievement of developmental milestones of Seychellois children, to examine the testing conditions in the community health centres and to seek the views of parents on the development of their children.

A pilot study to analyse the usefulness of the DDST which Maternal Child Health (MCH) nurses have been administering to children of different ages up to six years since the 1990s was conducted from the middle to end of 2015 by the Institute of Early Childhood Development (IECD).

In its 4th Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) forum on Friday at the STC conference centre, the IECD brought together child development professionals,  nurses, parents, and other stakeholders to share the results of the study, discuss policy-related issues, discuss the recommendations of the study for future improvements, and  chart the way forward.

The study looked at various aspects of child development from conception, birth weight, age of parents, their living condition …

The consultant who led the study, Egbert Benstrong, presented among other recommendations the need for the Ministry of Health (MoH) in collaboration with its partners to explore ways to strength its reproductive health education programme in view of reducing the number of teenage pregnancies with particular focus on girls.

There is the need to reemphasise the benefits of breast feeding especially for the first six months of life.

MoH should consider putting in place an effective information management system to collect, store and access DDST results in all regional health centres and if possible have a main centralised repository at the MOH headquarters.

MoH should have should continue to increase parents and schools’ awareness on the difficulties children experience with the language component of the DDST test.

Addressing everyone gathered to hear the results and discuss them, the chief executive of the IECD, Shirley Choppy, noted that it is always a great opportunity to bring together professionals concerned with different aspects of ECCE to share information, experiences and ideas with the ultimate objective of bringing about improvements in whatever they do which have direct implications on our small children.

“Today’s forum is one of the most important that the IECD has organised and is central in its mandate which is conducting research in ECCE,” she said.

She expressed the hope that the recommendations discussed would be translated into action to improve services provided, build the capacity of professionals, data available on child development and improvement in learning outcomes .