The Importance of Nurturing Care

• Nurturing care starts before birth when caregivers talk and sing to the fetus.
• By the second trimester, the fetus can hear and recognize the mother's voice after birth.
• Skin-to-skin contact, breastfeeding, and companion support strengthen early bonding.
• Babies respond to faces, gentle touch, and soothing voices, all aiding brain growth.
• Nurturing care is a set of conditions that provide for children's health, nutrition, security, and safety, responsive caregiving, and early learning opportunities.
• The infant brain expects and depends on nurturing care for a healthy environment.
• Nurturing care promotes children's development and safeguards from potential adversities, continuing to adolescence.
• Prenatal health reduces risks of preterm birth, low birth weight, and birth defects
• Recognizing and responding to illness is crucial for nurturing care.
• Enriched learning and building secure trust and emotional relations are key aspects.
• Communication should be bi-directional, with caregivers being sensitive and responsive, including responsive feeding.
• Opportunities for learning involve communication and a language-rich environment.
• There are opportunities for age-appropriate play and early learning at home and in the community.
• Security and safety involve families and children living in clean, safe environments and practicing good hygiene.
• Secure children experience supportive discipline and do not experience neglect, violence, displacement, or conflict.
• Good health involves monitoring children's physical and emotional conditions and giving appropriate responses to their daily needs.
• Antenatal, childbirth, and postnatal care should be of good quality, with promotive and preventive health services.
• Childhood illness should be appropriately managed.
• Caregivers' physical and mental well-being are as important as the child's.
• Adequate nutrition includes exclusive breastfeeding initiated early and frequent, diverse complementary foods.
• Micronutrient supplementation is given as needed, child malnutrition is prevented, and food safety and family food security are ensured.
• Responsive caregiving involves protecting children from injury.

Making Nurturing Care Happen

• Ensure women and young children have access to good-quality health and nutrition services.
• Health and nutrition services should be more supportive of nurturing care.
• Increase outreach to families and children with the greatest risk of sub-optimal development.
• Specialized services should be established for families and children with developmental disabilities.
• Collaboration with other sectors is needed to ensure a continuum of nurturing care.
• Reinforce that education begins at birth.
• Ensure good health practices and hygiene in early childhood programs.
• Put family engagement at the core of early childhood education.
• Integrate children with additional needs.
• Invest in adolescent and adult education.
• Social and Child Protection sectors should guarantee identity and citizenship, shield from poverty, and link benefits to services that uphold nurturing care.
• It is important to ensure a continuum of care and protect children from maltreatment and family dissolution.
• Cost of inaction at an individual level involves the loss of average adult income per year for children at risk of not reaching their developmental potential.
• This loss can be about 26%, exerting a strong downward economic pull and trapping families in poverty.