A little nuggest of interest for our baby box supporters! Our programming team have been working very hard to design our brand new baby box programme, and they’ve devised a process for handing out the baby boxes that will help us find out if they are an effective incentive for women to attend postnatal care sessions.
We’re working closely with health centres in Nairobi to run this process. At their final antenatal session at the care centre before baby arrives, each mum will receive a voucher and a little baby hat!
After the baby is born, if the mum returns to the centre for an postnatal check up, then she’ll be able to swap her voucher for the complete box. This incentive gives mum a little extra reason to come back into the health centre and check up on her own health, and that of the baby.
Of course, increasing uptake of postnatal care is a big and complicated issue, and there are lots of reasons why attendance is poor. This research will just provide an extra little piece of the puzzle, to see if baby boxes are a sufficient incentive to make a difference. There’s evidence from other areas and contexts that incentives may increase health service provision (this study, for example.) As baby boxes are popular with funders, it would be great to discover unexplored ways for them to be used to benefit the health of the families receiving them!
The photograph I’ve used here is actually a hat and voucher from our Happy Parenting Treat. Anne Liese tells me it’s very similar to what we’ll be handing out in Nairobi – but those haven’t been ordered quite yet. I’ll be very excited to share photographs of the real thing, including our gorgeous boxes, as soon as they arrive at the Nairobi office.
If you’d like to support Child.org’s work, and you’re looking for a beautiful gift for an expectant parent, do check out our Happy Parenting Treats at treatyourteam.org.
You can read more about the status and plan for our Baby Box programme on this page.
***Update***
Doreen and Anne-Liese, from our programming team, have shared a photograph of some sample hats from a Kenyan supplier, below. Ordering them has been slightly complicated becuase we’ve asked to just order the more gener-neutral hat designs, but the supplier has told us we can only purchase a full selection of designs. The samples look cute though! My fave is the one that says Fish…
babyhats.jpg