Nutritional status and development of St. Lucian children at day care centres

This was a comparitive study of children who attended day-care centres with those who stayed at home in St. Lucia. The children came from very similar social backgrounds and were compared using anthropometry and their performances at the Bettye Caldwell Preschool Inventory and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary tests. The quality of the service given in the day care centres was assessed. Finally the environment of the centres was compared with that of the homes of the community children. The sample consisted of 60 children, 30 in three rural government centres and from the communities nearest the centres. There were 28 boys and 32 girls with an age range of 40-64 months and a mean age of 51.7 ñ 5.7 months. It was found that there was no significant difference between the combined centre and the combined community anthropometry values. No significant difference was found between the centre and children in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary raw scores (centre mean - 16.5 ñ 4.6; community mean - 15.9 ñ 6.9). However significant difference was found in the Bettye Caldwell Preschool Inventory total scores between centre (mean = 33.8 ñ 7.7) and community children (mean = 27.7 ñ 8.1), scores were similar to those of four year old Dominican children but lower than those of Jamaican children. The centres were found to offer an environment richer in play equipment than that of homes, but not necessarily safer or with greater adult-child interactions. The centres were found to be deficient in safety measures such as fire safety, first aid, monitoring of health and nutritional status, furniture available, toilet facilities for the children and staff, and space available for the children to play. The staff had duties other than child play, and although reasonably qualified, with a reasonable staff-child ratio of 1:12.5, interaction with the children was limited. It was concluded that a higher school achievement was associated with attendance at the centre and may be attributed mainly to the presence of the higher level of of play equipment offered at the centre. Attention should be paid to the improvement of safety measure, monitoring of health and nutritional status and availabilty of outdoor space. It is suggested that possibly training of the mothers to interact with their children may improve the school achievement scores of the community children. (AU)

Nutritional status and development of St. Lucian children at day care centres

This was a comparative study of children who attended day-care centres with those who stayed at home in St. Lucia. The children came from very similar social backgrounds and were compared using anthropometry and their performances at the Bettye Caldwell Preschool Inventory and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary tests. The quality of the service given in the day care centres was assessed. Finally the environment of the centres was compared with that of the homes of the community children. The sample consisted of 60 children, 30 in three rural government centres and 30 from the communities nearest the centres. There were 28 boys and 32 girls with an age range of 40 - 64 months and a mean age of 51.7ñ5.7 months. It was found that there was no significant difference between the combined centre and the combined community anthropometry values. No significant difference was found between the centre and community children in the Peabody Picture Vocabulary raw scores (centre mean - 16.5ñ4.6; community mean - 15.9ñ6.9). However significant differences was found in the Bettye Caldwell Preschool Inventory total scores between centre ( mean = 33.8ñ7.7) and community children ( mean = 27.7ñ8.1), p<0.01. School achievement and language development test scores were similar to those of four year old Dominican children, but lower than those of Jamaican children. The centres were found to offer an environment richer in play equipment than that of the homes, but not necessarily safer or with greater adult-child interactions. The centres were found to be deficient in safety measures such as fire safety, first aid, monitoring of health and nutritional status, furniture available, toilet facilities for the children and staff, and space available for the children to play. The staff had duties other than child care, and although reasonably qualified, with a reasonable staff-child ratio of 1:12.5, interaction with the children was limited. It was concluded that a higher school achievement was associated with attendance at the centre and may be attributed mainly to the presence of the higher level of play equipment offered at the centre. Attention should be paid to the improvement of safety measures, monitoring of health and nutritional status and availability of outdoor space. It is suggested that possibly training of the mothers to interact with their children may improve the school achievement scores of the community children (Summary)

Nutrition, social and intellectual performance of rural pre-school children in St. Lucia: the contribution of day-care centres - abstract

Day-Care attenders spend much time at the centres. Therefore their intellectual, social, health and nutritional needs should be satisfied. Little work has so far been done in St. Lucia to determine if this occurs. We compared attenders with non-attenders, using anthropometry and performances at Bettye Caldwell Pre-school Inventory and Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test. The quality of service given was assessed and the environment was compared with that of the homes of non-attenders. Sixty children, 30 in 3 rural Government centres and 30 from nearby communities, were tested. There were 28 boys and 30 girls ranging in age from 40-64 months (mean=51.7 ñ 5.7 months). We found higher mean achievement (attenders=16.5ñ4.6; non-attenders = 15.9ñ6.9). No signifcant anthropometric differences were found between attenders and non-attenders. However, the current nutritonal status was correlated with the children's performance since very strong negative associations were found between wasting and test scores. We conclude that although each child's nutritional status strongly predicted his achievement level, it was not the factor contributed by the centres. We suggest that the main factors contributing to the higher achievement and sociability of attenders were the increased availability of play equipment and the company of different adults (AU)