Rethinking Service Documentation for Orphans and Vulnerable Children (OVC)Juliana Thornton, Research Manager

SAMEA CONFERENCE “Evaluation in Action” 30 March 2007

Introducing Noah:• Nurturing Orphans of AIDS for Humanity• South African NGO• 112 “Arks” across Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal Provinces• An Ark consists of a committee of elected community leaders who oversee

the activities of a group of unpaid volunteers who provide the following services to OVC in the community:

- Registration- Home visits- Accessing social welfare grants and birth certificates- Establishing and maintaining a food garden

• Arks are networks, not buildings, however most Arks are also equipped with centres and feeding schemes which provide the following additional services:

- Feeding- Day care- After care

• As an NGO Noah needs to be able to balance the cost of data capture (in terms of both time and money) with the worth and usability of the data collected.

• Documentation and data capture plays an important role in accountability and reporting to donors, but time spent by staff on data capture and reporting can be time lost in service delivery to OVC’s.

• The Home Visit is one such service where a balance needs to be struck between action and documentation

• For Noah, the Home Visit, as a service, ideally needs to fulfill one or more of the following:

– Psychosocial support: It should provide an opportunity for meaningful interaction between the volunteer and the child, resulting in either a sense of wellbeing or a sense of security for the child

– Assessment opportunity: It should allow the volunteer to do a brief “needs assessment” in order to determine the most urgent needs and develop a plan to meet these needs

• Documentation of the home visit then needs to satisfy the following requirements:– It needs to provide proof of quality contact with the

child, – The information in the documentation should be

immediately useful to the volunteer in assessing the child,

• Furthermore, and very importantly, it needs to fulfill an additional requirement:– It needs to satisfy donor requirements for reporting.

Traditional Method: The “Checklist”

VOLUNTEER’S CHECKLIST

Your Name: Date: Name of Ark:

Child’s Details:

Name:…………………………………………………………………………..

1. Who was at home when you visited the child? The Child ? Mother ? Father ? Brothers/Sisters ? Grandparent ? Other ? Please explain:___________ 2. Is the child happy (smiling, talkative, playful)? Yes ? No ? 3. Is the child more quiet than usual? Yes ? No ? 4. Is the child healthy (no runny nose, not tired, able to go to school and to play)? Yes ? No ? 5. Does the child look bathed and clean? Yes ? No ? 6. Does the child have sores or bruises? Yes ? No ? 7. Does the child look a lot thinner or skinnier than before? Yes ? No ? 8. Is the child going to school everyday? Yes ? No ? If no, why?________________________________________________________________ If the child was sick, how many days was s/he out of school? ________________________ 9. In the last month has the child stayed home from school because his/her parents or brothers and sisters were sick? Yes ? No ? Grants and/or Birth Registration

10. Does the child have a birth certificate? Yes ? No ?

11. If not, why and what do you plan to do to help the child to get a birth certificate?

____________________________________________________________________________

12. Does the child receive a Government grant? Yes ? No ?

13. If not, why and what do you plan to do to help the child to get a government grant?

____________________________________________________________________________

Other Comments

______________________________________________________________________

Checked and Verified: _____________________________ Date:_______________

New Method: Drawing• In 2006, in partnership with another NGO,

Woz’obona, we developed a new system:

1. The child draws a picture

2. The volunteer asks “Tell me about your picture”

3. And writes down the child’s words verbatim next to the picture.

• Quite simple really, but this method has a number of benefits for both child and volunteer, most importantly perhaps: – It provides a medium through which open and

honest communication can take place.

• The following drawings illustrate some of the additional benefits of the method:

Educational benefits “First Step to Literacy”

Psychosocial Needs Assessment

Psychosocial Needs Continued…

Storytelling:

Children’s Issues:

Fulfillment for Volunteer

Older children

• From an M&E standpoint the method is unique in that the documentation of the service is an integral part of the service itself – the client is in fact the “author” of the resulting documentation

• The documentation also satisfies most of the requirements previously mentioned (proof of contact, usable information, donor requirements)

Where to from here?

• Piloted in 4 Arks from June 06

• Roll out to the other 108?

Challenges– Bereavement Counselling

• Rob Smetherham Bereavment services for Children (RBSC)– What if the child wants to keep the drawing?

• Any ideas?– Time – the method takes more time than a traditional home visit

• Make it the norm – ideally volunteers should take time– Illiteracy of volunteers

• Only some volunteers are able to use the intervention– Older children who are not interested in journaling or drawing

• Use the checklist– No template – lack of conformity, prone to errors, information left out

• Training and follow up– Ethical issues: disclosure of rape/abuse

• Any ideas? Informed consent would be the way to go in a survey/research situation, but such a process would not be possible in this situation and disclosure of abuse may put the volunteer in an untenable situation

Questions?