Early Childhood Development Forums - Save the Children South Africa Wentworth ECD Centre Audit (ECDF) 2014 - KwaZulu-Natal

Description:
The data set contains the responses of the 21 ECD centres that participated in the 2014 Audit and includes 867 variables.
Abstract:
Forums in South Africa are critical in active citizen engagement in South Africa. The history of the country gave birth to community forums as they were used to mobilise resistance against the apartheid government. In KwaZulu-Natal Early Childhood Development (ECD) forums are common in various communities.

The focus of this study was on ECD forums which are supported by Save the Children South Africa (SCSA). This study was aimed at assessing the impact of participation in ECD forums for individual ECD centres in the Wentworth area. The 2014 audit data was compared with the the baseline data created in 2011 by SCSA. The 2011 instrument was substantially modified and used to collect data for the 2014 ECD centre Audit. This was conducted in November 2014. The data was collected under the following ECD sub themes: infrastructure, type of care provided, food and nutrition, regulatory requirements, health and safety, child profiles, quality of ECD programming, and ECD financing. The audit covered all the critical areas of ECD. The comparison shows that ECD centres have made some improvement with regards to several critical areas since 2011. An important issue was that a number of the centres audited in 2011 were no longer in existence and a number of new centres were included in the 2014 ECD centre Audit.

The findings of this study show that SCSA's intervention in Wentworth ECD forum has improved the quality of ECD service which is provided by the centres.