Developing the Blue Box for age 4 to 6

1. Introduction and Background Information

1.1. Humanity and Inclusion

Humanity and Inclusion (HI) – previously known as Handicap International – is an independent and impartial aid organization working in situations of poverty and exclusion, conflict and disaster. We work alongside people with disabilities and vulnerable populations, taking action and bearing witness in order to respond to their essential needs, improve their living conditions and promote respect for their dignity and fundamental rights. HI is working in more than 60 countries over the World.

1.2. Physical and functional Rehabilitation

For 40 years, HI has been providing rehabilitation services to help people with disabilities, injuries, trauma or other health conditions reach and maintain a maximum level of functioning. Our rehabilitation experts implement and promote an inclusive and comprehensive approach, ensuring the entire rehabilitation process is adapted to each person’s needs and specific context. Our activities take into account the personal and contextual resources and barriers to accessing and benefiting from rehabilitation and related services, paying specific attention to the role of caregivers and communities in the rehabilitation process.

1.3. The Blue Box – 0 to 3

The Blue Box is a tool to help community workers and caregivers and families support early child development for all children. This includes children at risk of developmental delays (children with health conditions and malnutrition, children living in challenging environments with high psycho social distress ) and children with disabilities. It mainly targets children aged up to 3 years, since this is the period of maximum development potential.

The Blue Box promotes positive parenting principles and a holistic approach for the development of gross motor skills, fine motor skills, communication and cognitive skills, through play and routine home activities. The approach used in the Blue Box is fully compatible with Care for Child Development (CDD) by UNICEF and WHO, and with the nurturing care framework.

The games and activities proposed in the Blue Box enhance and supplement the recommendations given in the CDD’s counseling cards (1). Indeed they suggest more specific ideas and instructions about activities and games that are helpful for parents of children who are not developing typically and for whom “regular” activities and interactions need to be adapted, modified or broken down into more simple components. The idea is to take the current trends in early childhood development and supplement them with HI’s disability and rehabilitation expertise.

The Blue Box tool has been developed in the 90’s in Vietnam and Cambodia and since then has been revised and implemented in several programs by HI teams ; the most recent version has been used in a project targeting children living in refugee camps or displaced in Thailand, Pakistan and Bangladesh and in West Africa (Mali Niger and Burkina Faso) as part of a comprehensive nutrition program and complementary to stimulation therapy for children with severe malnutrition and as part of community development interventions. In Nepal it is currently used in remote and underserved communities to support children with developmental delays, impairments and their families.

The Blue Box includes:

1) An observation and monitoring tool to support community workers, called the “developmental journal” : a table showing the sequence of key development milestones in children from 0 to 3 years, covering 4 development dimensions (gross motor, fine motor, communication, cognitive skills ). 2) A box containing 4 sets of cards (85 in total), each one showing a simple activity or interaction to be done with the child to foster the development of certain skills. Cards are meant to be used by community workers or therapists both to find practical instructions on how to propose the activity and to facilitate communication with caregivers. 3) A training manual called : The Blue Box-promoting the development of all children through routine and play.

1.4. Blue Box 4 to 6

Lessons learned from the field and discussions which have taken place at the nurturing care conference in Laos in 2019 have lead us now to the decision to extend the age bracket of Blue Box, evaluation and proposed activities, up to the age of 6 years. Besides wanting to reach children in pre-school age we would like to also benefit of the Blue Box tool in order to improve/ stabilise/diversify child development, acquired during the developmental phase at age 0-3, up to the phase of the last years of early development, 4-6 years. We talk here about cognitive development, ADL s and socialization.

We have therefore consulted the different HI sectors, such as health, ECD and MHPSS, rehab and inclusive education, in order to define together the objectives of a work to be done by a consultant, which is to develop additional and age 4-6 appropriate activities to be used for the four sets of activity cards and developmental journal. The four sets being four areas of development, gross and fine motor, communication and cognition, with the idea to include a social/behavioural component in to the development areas of cognition and communication. Sensorial aspects have been split over all developmental areas, according to their relevancy to acquire one or the other developmental stone. Sensorial aspects have also been further addressed in “what to do if the child has a hearing/visual/motor/cognitive impairment” tips.

2 – Assignment

2.1. Assignment Objectives:

The consultant(s) will be in charge of developing a Blue Box for children aged 4-6, which will be the defining of age appropriate activities and the transfer of these activities to activity cards of 4 sets of different developmental areas. This work will be complementary to the already existing activities for age bracket 0-3. This will be produced in English language and translated in to Spanish and French at a later step.

2.2. Modalities

The consultant(s) will:

Define around 18-20 age appropriate activities, age bracket 4-6 years old, for each developmental area, gross and fine motor, cognition and language. This will mean about 18-20 activities which will complement the activities chosen for the age 0-3 for each development area. By doing so the consultant is asked to provide samples of illustrations, drawings or pictures or any other type of support that can be used by the illustrator – to be found for example in the internet. (To note that Illustrators won’t be able to develop illustrations only based on the description of the cards).

2.3. Deliverables

• 4 new sets of 18 to 20 activity card for age 4-6 and corresponding illustrations/illustrative support
• A developmental journal which contains the complementary activities for the age bracket 4-6
• A guiding book/ training manual on purpose of the tool, contexts of implementation (nurturing care, LMI countries….), cards and related information, explanation on the 4 areas of development and specificity, and background tools and information used to develop the material.

2.4. Consultant and HI’s Responsibilities

Objective for the work to be done by the consultant : – Identify and proposes methodologies to provide mentioned deliverables – Provides mentioned deliverables and presents them to HI technical team

Profile of the consultant: The below professionals are welcome to apply and would ideally be supported by a group of professionals of complementing sectors : Occupational Therapist Speech Therapist Psychologist Educator

HI: – Validates deliverables – Provides necessary documents or information

2.5. Additional information

Expected duration: 2 months as of mid November 2022.

(1) https://www.unicef.org/earlychildhood/files/4.CCD_-_Counselling_Cards.pdf