Home-Based Community Day Care and Children's Rights: The Colombian Case. Innocenti Occasional Papers. Child Rights Series, Number 3.

This paper describes the Programme for Home-Based Community Day Care, a training program undertaken by the Colombian Family Welfare Institute. The program offers training and support to mothers so that they can each care in their homes for up to 15 children from the local community. Now in its sixth year, the project reaches nearly 1 million children, or about 83 percent of all children living in poverty in Colombia. The paper describes the program in detail, examining the means used to tie communities into the initiative, the role of government and nongovernment organizations, and the activities of mothers, assistants, parent associations, and public officials. It also reviews studies that document the program's positive effect on the health, nutrition, and psychological and emotional well-being of the children involved, noting that: (1) the supervision provided through the community day care homes allows women to dedicate more time to jobs that augment the incomes of their families; and (2) the educational element of the program helps to enrich the relationships between adults and children and generate a social and cultural environment more favorable to children. The program's compliance with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is also discussed. An appendix outlines program costs. (MDM)