SPOON has been working in Uganda since 2016 in partnership with the Association of Religious through their Catholic Care for Children Uganda (ARU-CCCU) and a team of Master Trainers. We are working with 13 sites in the ARU-CCCU network, including childcare institutions, community centers, and schools. In February 2023, SPOON staff, the ARU-CCCU team, and the Master Trainers visited project sites in Uganda to understand the impact of the project to date and gather recommendations as we plan for the future.
Putting Knowledge Into Practice
During these visits, we learned more about how sites are putting their training into practice. With ongoing support from Master Trainers, staff (often nurses, social workers, and administrators) reported that they are changing their practices to improve how they track children’s growth through Count Me In, increase the quality and variety of foods they offer, and implement safe feeding practices. For example, one site shared how they have worked to incorporate nutrient-dense foods into snacks, like swapping eggs or fruit for popcorn, and updated feeding practices so that children would be more comfortable at mealtimes.
Supporting Family Care
Our project includes several community-based sites, which equip families with skills and knowledge to nourish children. Many of these sites also provide additional types of support, allowing nutrition to come alongside rehabilitation and other services. One school we work with described how they are sharing their skills by training parents, and also partnered with a local radio program to get the word out about the importance of nutrition and feeding for children with disabilities in the entire community. We also learned of some of the challenges community-based sites face, which are often related to distance and transportation issues, and we are working to adapt our model accordingly.
Community based sites support families with vulnerable children through training of caregivers, providing regular support and problem solving using available resources in a home without taking the children away and allowing family support care as a best practice.
Lorna Mary Namususwa
Master Trainer
ARU-CCCU is also leading the way in care reform, helping families stay together and helping children in residential care return to families. SPOON, ARU-CCCU, and the Master Trainers are now working on a set of tools to incorporate nutrition and feeding into the support that ARU-CCCU staff offer to families when a child returns to family care.
Advocating for Change
Finally, we explored how we can increase our impact beyond the sites where we are working. We brought together a team of experts in nutrition, care reform, and disability to discuss how our work can inform the national care reform movement in Uganda. Just before our site visits, the Master Trainers presented at Uganda’s National Nutrition Symposium. Their presentation shared lessons from our work with a national audience and called for more attention to nutrition and disability in policies, programs, and investments related to nutrition, care reform, and early child development.
