Conducting End-line Consultancy: Integrated Early Childhood (ECD) care and services in Yumbe District

Introduction

The Aga Khan Foundation (AKF) is an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN), a group of private not-for profit, non-denominational international development agencies, institutions and programs that work primarily in the poorest parts of Africa and Asia to improve the quality of life of communities in remote and resource poor areas. In East Africa, AKF works with partners to improve the quality of life by promoting and developing innovative solutions to challenges of development in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda. Reflecting the complex and multi-faceted nature of development, AKF programs in the region encompasses Education, Health and Nutrition, Early Childhood Development, Agriculture and Food Security, Climate Resilience, Economic Inclusion and Civil Society. AKF is implementing a one-year pilot program and is seeking a qualified consultant(s) to lead design, field data collection, report writing and dissemination for the Baseline study.

Programme Background.

In partnership with the Madrasa Early Childhood Program (MECP-U), AKF is implementing 12 months Early Childhood Development (ECD) project in Zone 4 Bidibidi refugee settlement in Yumbe District West Nile-Uganda. The overall objective is to improve the delivery of integrated ECD care and services in Bidibidi refugee settlement for boys and girls aged 0-6 and their parents/caregivers. Specific project interventions are designed to ensure that:

• ECD caregivers and community structures have increased knowledge and skills to deliver improved centre based and household ECD care and services of boys and girls aged 0-3 and their parents/caregivers.
• Boys and girls aged 0-3 benefit from improved inclusive, conducive, and responsive centre and household environments that promote holistic socio-emotional, cognitive, and linguistic development to effectively transition to formal learning.
• Government, partners, ECD service providers, and civil society actively learn and collaborate to improve the delivery of low-cost sustainable quality ECD care and services for boys and girls aged 0-6

To achieve the intended objectives, AKF, MECP and Yumbe Local Government(YLG) have been developing engaging Village Health teams (VHTs) to deliver to deliver multiple parental/caregiver engagement strategies, undertake home visits, particularly to the most at risk and vulnerable households, and supported linkages for target beneficiaries to access necessary service provider where needed. The VHTs were trained on Care for Child development (CCD https://www.unicef.org/documents/care-child-development ) and Key family care practices.

In addition, mapping of ECD 8 ECD centres have been supported through capacity building activities for caregivers in on low-cost play-based material development and conducted intense Human Centred Design engagements leading to prototypes for translating learning and theory into practice.

To date, the project has reached more than 985 households, over 1000 caregivers of children 0-6 years and benefited over 1700 children.

Scope of the evaluation

The Endline will cover Yumbe district Bidi-Bidi refugee camp zone 4. The data collection will be in the 5 selected implementation villages. The successful consultant is expected to:

• Propose methodologies to evaluate the project’s effectiveness, relevance, efficiency and impact
• Conduct literature review of existing project documents accumulated over the course of implementation
• Undertake field work data collection and analysis
• Generate key lessons and identify promising practices for further promotion of ECD work in emergency settings.
• Identify gaps for informing ongoing and future ECD programming work
• Document good practices and generate evidence‐based lessons learned and actionable recommendations to strengthen the strategies of ongoing and future similar programs.

Methodology

The consultant will be responsible for preparatory meetings, review of documents including the project proposal, developing the project study design and methodology; development of data collection tools and pilot testing; field data collection; enumerators recruitment and training; quality assurance; data analysis; reporting and dissemination. He/she is expected to adopt a mixed method approach in conducting the evaluation to allow a comprehensive examination of all aspects of the Intervention and in addition also be expected to review primary and secondary data to inform the assessment.

Ethical Standards and Safeguarding:

The design and implementation of the study must be in line with the research ethical standards including protection of participants from potential research-related harm, confidentiality, informed consent, beneficence, respect for persons and safeguarding principles to protect respondents from sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, and bullying.

Deliverables

The main deliverables and activities for this project are as follows:

• Inception report: A detailed inception report per the requirements agreed with AKF.
• Endline report: Completed Endline study report (the report should have quantitative and qualitative findings, completed dummy tables, data visualizations, and analysis of findings. The reporting structure should follow the requirements established with AKF and will include the following data as annexes:
• Datasets: Raw data and complete, cleaned datasets in English de-identified and The Consultant will also be expected to provide a fully ‘cleaned-up’ dataset in an agreed file format (e.g., XLS, SPSS).
• Transcribed and translated transcripts: Complete, edited transcriptions and translations of all survey responses, focus group discussions and interviews conducted in English.

Key competencies

• Team lead should possess at least a master’s degree in public health, demography/ population studies, Statistics and with essential training in Monitoring and Evaluation. Any training in public policy is an added advantage.
• Other team members should ideally possess multidisciplinary qualifications across social science, social work, clinical/ human medicine, and related qualifications.
• Strong experience carrying out surveys and associated qualitative data collection, particularly focusing on refugee settings.
• The lead should have experience of conducting similar evaluations
• Demonstrated experience in employing Open Data Kit (ODK) or other computer assisted personal interviewing software.
• Demonstrated experience in data management, including designing and managing ECD projects and capable of handling large datasets for study purposes.
• Country knowledge and experience in conducting research and impact evaluation studies Uganda specifically in West Nile.
• Demonstrated experience of safeguarding and respecting vulnerable populations.