Lusaka Outreach Programmes of SOS Children’s Village of Zambia Trust (Family Strengthening Programme and Medical Centre)

Background

In 1996 SOS Children's Villages Zambia registered its presence in Zambia as a family based child care organisation. In 2002 the Lusaka Outreach programmes under the names Social Centre and Medical Centre were developed and began operations on a pilot basis. The social centre has since been transformed as the Family Strengthening Programme, a community based child care intervention aimed at the prevention of child abandonment. The current programme has been funded by Norad through SOS Children's Villages Norway's multi-year cooperation agreement with Norad.

Purpose/objective

The main aim of the evaluation was to measure the impact the Family Strengthening Programme and Medical Centre had made with a view to draw lessons learnt and recommend a way forward. The specific objectives of the evaluation were; to assess the impact the programmes made in the lives of the participating children within the target group, their families as well as in the community; to establish the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability and how participatory the programme interventions were; and to identify the lessons learnt from the programmes that could be taken to further develop the programmes.

Methodology

The evaluation used a qualitative management and operational research study methodology that engaged a rapid participatory assessment and consultative approach whose output was expected to inform current and future practice. The rapid participatory assessment technique applied focus group discussions, social and service mapping, timeline, wealth ranking, individual in-depth interviews, and questionnaire interviews to collect data. There were equally consultative meetings, stakeholder meetings, and desk reviews.

The study sites for the evaluation were four compounds; namely Mandevu, Chazanga, Kabanana and Chipata. These were selected for the evaluation because the 103 targeted beneficiary households were in these areas at project inception in 2002.

Key findings

The study findings showed that targeting beneficiaries was well defined and conformed to nationally conceived criteria that identified the vulnerable as such. The Family Strengthening Programme had followed this up with an assessment of recruitment that rigorously identified beneficiaries with community involvement. On the health part, it was observed that generally the Medical Centre dealt with primary health care, HIV and AIDS and TB awareness, prevention and treatment programmes, child immunizations, nutritional programmes for the malnourished children and AIDS terminally ill, health education, and home based care. All the beneficiaries in the communities who were on the Family Strengthening Programme accessed the medical services at subsidized costs.

The evaluation results indicated that the Family Strengthening Programme education support component had integrated and reintegrated children in the supported households. It was also worth noting that the gender balance was being addressed in the support to schools, for instance, reintegration of pregnant girls and enhanced enrolment of girl children. Similarly, it was observed that in the first 103 households, three children out of the five that completed their grade twelve were in the university studying degree programmes. It was also revealed that the education school support was working closely with other partners to secure scholarships for tertiary education. Other than those children under the Family Strengthening Programme supported households, there were some children that had benefited from Family Support Programme through the school support programme to community and government schools.

Child rights issues and para-legal training were part of the broad interventions delivered to the beneficiaries of which 271 households were targeted. From these households, 120 children (62 girls and 58 boys) were trained. The number of adults that were under the training included 176 women and 4 men. The trainings took workshop approaches.

The beneficiaries were empowered and benefited in the following areas; Title deeds sensitisation campaign and subsequent gazetting of the Chazanga and Kabanana townships as legal settlement areas, Training for life skills transformation workshops, Community Home Based Care, Sport (training and formation of under 14, 17 and 20 clubs registered with Football Association of Zambia), HIV and AIDS awareness campaigns, ART, Paralegal training, School support programme to government and community schools, Establishment of community resource centres and 2005 rice relief programme on behalf of the government response to the famine.

Recommendations

- There is need for a permanent position at National Office to offer technical support and quality control monitoring to both the Medical Centre and Family Strengthening Programme;
- The National Office should assist the Medical Centre to develop a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system;
- There is need to increase the field officer staffing levels within the Family Strengthening Programme and further train them in driving to ease mobility;
- There is need to either employ specialist staff in IGA, Food Security, and Para-legal or build capacity among the existing field officers;
- The procurement office should be transferred to be under the National Office though functioning at local level and further increase its staff compliment to include two procurement officers and a stores person;
- There is need to diversify and recapitalise the household IGAs in accordance with household sizes;
- There is need for continuously close monitoring and mentoring of household IGAs;
- There is need to enhance the initiated practice and use of organic fertiliser as against chemical fertiliser;
- Food assistance should be considered for some households in the pre-harvest famine period;
- There was need for enhanced motivational and confidence building, support and mentoring to households and youths;
- There is need to re-evaluate the budgetary allocation to care-givers and community capacity building interventions;
- The households that are in the 36% category of worst case scenario need vulnerability re-evaluation and individualised interventions;
- There was need to re-evaluate the budgetary allocation to property household improvement to enable more households to be reached; and
- There was need to have an SOS organisational policy guidelines on the Medical Centre.