INFANT AND YOUNG CHILD FEEDING (IYCF), TRAINING REPORT

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Training date

18th – 22ndAugust 2022

  1. :Introduction.

HRDO have conducted five days infant and young child feeding practice to its caregivers and nutrition project staff and community health workers. A total of 146 community health workers and caregivers were trained staff consist of 66 males and 80 females who were intended to provide infant and young child feeding best practice to the target beneficiaries. The training was aimed at providing the staff and the other program team an insight of the IYCF in order to equip the field staff the necessary capacity in the area of nutrition, health and hygiene promotion. The training was also to emphasize the importance of having a strong link between IYCF programming in non-emergency and emergency contexts and encourage strong operational action plans among and between the field staff that are involved in nutrition and health in order to ensure that the theory is put into practice.

  1. :OBJECTIVES.

This training is intended to accomplish the following:

  1. Identify gaps between actual and recommended IYCF practices in the CMAM communities
  2. Raise awareness among the personnel on the importance of recommended breastfeeding and complementary feeding practices for children 0 – 23 months.
  1. Welcoming note.

Facilitator welcome participant to the training venue and ask them to introduce, after the introduction and setting of the environment the facilitator once again welcome the members to the five days training where he define the training objectives to the participant and outline the intended purpose for the training. The facilitator requested the participant to actively engage with the facilitator and ask question where necessary for clarity.

1.1. Day one: Definition of IYCF.

The participants were taken through the definition of the term “IYCF” as infant young child feeding, the training facilitator took time with staff to understand the aspect in its various applications in nutrition and health promotion. The participant was taken through the main objectives which included, to increase awareness of the importance of IYCF to share experiences, challenges and lessons-learnt in IYCF program implementation in different contexts.

3.1.2.  Day2 : Community Assessment of IYCF practices

The training facilitator took the participant through the description of how IYCF practices are viewed by the community and discuss with the participant various behaviour and practices existing within the communities that hinders the best child care practices, The facilitator divided the participant into groups an assigned them to name the issues to be investigated during an IYCF Community Assessment (classroom preparation), through focus group discussion among the participant where the participant were able to figure out the common procedures used during the assessment of the IYCF in the therapeutic and community centres.

The participant were able to learn the how to conduct caregivers group discussion on the best practices of IYCF within the communities and were able to draw breastfeeding practices matrix as well as complementary feeding practices matrix and calendar of local, feasible, available and affordable foods.

By the close of the training on day one the participant were able to learn through their group discussion

  1. Current Practice: what is actually practiced by the individual or community
  2. Recommended Practice: practices recommended by health authorities because they support normal health, growth and development.
  3. Motivators: what helps the individual or community perform the recommended practice.
  4. Barriers: what prevents the individual or community from performing the recommended practice.

5. Feasible practice: the most realistic do-able behaviour that an individual or community agrees to and is expected to adopt. Gradual acceptance and practice of feasible behaviour could eventually lead to the adoption of recommended practice.

6. Message Development: develop messages around the recommended practice. With this information select Channels of Communication: a combination of mass media, print, interpersonal communication, and traditional forms of communication (i.e. folk media, songs, puppet shows, street drama, and local art)

Day 3: IYCF gap analysis.

Using an interactive matrix exercise participants were asked to consider what they thought were their organizations’ current IYCF capacity in terms of programming, organizational infrastructure and most significant gaps, the participant give Lack of trained lactation counselors, Poor understanding of indicators and M&E, Few front-line staff trained on IYCF and People in charge of co-ordination not prioritizing IYCF as the main gaps in the area of IYCF implementation. It was evident during the training that the staff had little information about the IYCF key component.

Day 4: Roles of Community health workers and care givers in IYCF.

The training facilitator took the staff through the role of IYCF in the community based programs and the participant learnt the following as the main roles to accomplish as an IYCF facilitators.

  1. Skilled support by the health system.
  1. Provide maternal nutrition education during pregnancy and lactation.
  1. Provide IYCF counseling and other support services in health facilities at MCH contacts in primary health care services.

  1. Community-based counseling and support.
  1. Establish community based integrated IYCF counseling services at community level and capacity development of community workers
  2. Creation of mother support groups for peer-to-peer support. The key message of the workshop was that an IYCF strategy needs to be comprehensive, addressing all 6 major

components rather than picking one or two and tailoring the sub-components to the local situation. Further, that producing results on complementary feeding requires a multi-sectorial response looking at social protection and education, as well as public health. The participants were able to learn the key roles and responsibilities of IYCF educator.

  • Day 5: Integration of Key IYCF componentin other programa reas.

In this session, the training facilitator took the participant about the prospects for integration, giving examples from health (maternal/neo-natal care, CMAM,), child development, social protection, education, food security and livelihoods. He highlighted the importance of the rights-based approach which promoted increased food access, family-based agriculture, income generation and the involvement and mobilization of communities. He challenged the participant how to first track improvements of IYCF integration into livelihood and health programs in order to reflect positive and equitable trends in the underlying, intermediate and proximate determinants of under-nutrition resulting from overall economic progress and equity-oriented community service delivery.

Conclusion and way forward.

The training was conducted within the timeline and there were no issues raised, It was clear from the participant that there high need for IYCF on job training to enable motivates the program staff at all-time due to the evolving changes of the emergency situations. The presentations and discussions highlighted the relative issues and guidance that can be of benefit to improving the quality of IYCF programming in all contexts. The report sets out the key points and main discussions from the different sessions. One key issues however came out as priorities which require immediate commitment and action.

  • It is critical that IYCF and other programs are better packaged to work at scale and unleash their full potential.