Abstract:
This study was carried out to assess quality of care practices provided to children of below
five years of age in Temeke Municipality Dar es Salaam. The study consisted of two
phases, the first phase was development of a care assessment tool (Care Score Index) and
the second phase was assessing the quality of care practices in the study area using the
developed tool. The tool comprised of four parameters of child care practices which are
maternal health seeking practices and child immunization, child feeding practices,
psychosocial care practices and hygiene practices. A total of 198 mothers with their
children were randomly selected to participate in a cross-section study in four wards of
Temeke Municipal. Data were analysed using IBM SPSS version 20 and WHO Anthro
software version 3.2.2. The development of Care Score Index has been taken as a first step
in formulating a more universal tool to be used for assessing child care practices within
households in different societies in Tanzania.
Respondents were found to have good care practices with high proportion of scores in
category one which represented higher scores, except for maternal health seeking practices
whereby greater proportion were in category two (lower scores). Maternal factors such as
education, marital status, occupation and number of children were found to have no
significant association with quality of care practices. The overall care score was
significantly associated with underweight (p=0.003) while child feeding practices score
was significantly associated with underweight (p=0.009) and wasting (p=0.017). The study
concluded that composite of index for dimension of quality of child care practices has
potential in assessing health and nutrition outcome. Therefore, it is recommended that
coverage of more varied type of stakeholders should continue in developing and validating
simple tools to measure care practices that can be used in different societies in Tanzania.
