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”

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?