Population Council, Nairobi, Kenya.
Psychol Health Med. 2012;17(3):295-310. doi: 10.1080/13548506.2011.597771. Epub 2011 Jul 28.
Insufficient data on the nature and extent of children's vulnerability in Uganda has challenged government and donors in priority setting, resource allocation and developing effective approaches to improve well-being. We conducted a population-based survey among a nationally representative sample of 2551 households, covering a total of 7946 children. We engaged national stakeholders in a priority-setting exercise to develop a scoring system to assess dimensions of children's vulnerability. The exercise identified individual and household characteristics to assess vulnerability--many of which had not been measured previously--to which numerical weights representing vulnerability level were assigned. Highly weighted characteristics included maternal death, disability, child labour and pregnancy before age 17. Psychosocial elements included living apart from siblings, having nobody to talk to and never visiting a living parent. According to this approach, an estimated 51.1% of children in Uganda (weighted for national population distribution) are considered critically or moderately vulnerable. It is to these children, equivalent to a national total of 8.7 million, that support services should be prioritised. However, survey data suggest that the most critically vulnerable children are under-represented in several types of support services. This pioneering, participatory methodology provides a rudimentary, but valuable, first step towards quantifying the vulnerability of children in Uganda and assessing their resource needs. It has been used by the Government of Uganda to determine subcategories of vulnerability for resource allocation. A major advantage is that it uses local contextual knowledge of child vulnerability rather than generic criteria applied in international surveys. Further analytical work is required to validate the methodology, link it to child well-being outcomes and devise a practical tool for service providers to refine programme targeting. The approach may be useful to national, regional or local service providers seeking an overview of their client base to monitor and improve programme-targeting efforts.
乌干达儿童的脆弱性的性质和程度的数据不足，这给政府和捐助者在确定优先事项、资源分配和制定改善福祉的有效方法方面带来了挑战。我们在全国范围内对 2551 户家庭进行了一项基于人群的调查，共涉及 7946 名儿童。我们让国家利益攸关方参与了一项确定优先事项的工作，以制定一个评分系统来评估儿童脆弱性的各个方面。这项工作确定了评估脆弱性的个人和家庭特征——其中许多特征以前没有被测量过——并为其分配了代表脆弱性水平的数值权重。高度加权的特征包括母亲死亡、残疾、童工和 17 岁以下怀孕。社会心理因素包括与兄弟姐妹分开生活、无人交谈和从未探望过在世的父母。根据这种方法，乌干达约有 51.1%的儿童（按全国人口分布加权）被认为处于严重或中度脆弱状态。这些儿童（相当于全国总共 870 万儿童）应该是支持服务的优先对象。然而，调查数据表明，在几种类型的支持服务中，最脆弱的儿童的代表性不足。这种开创性的、参与性的方法为量化乌干达儿童的脆弱性和评估其资源需求提供了一个基本但有价值的第一步。乌干达政府已经使用它来确定资源分配的脆弱性亚类。一个主要的优势是，它使用了当地对儿童脆弱性的知识，而不是国际调查中使用的通用标准。需要进一步的分析工作来验证该方法，将其与儿童福祉结果联系起来，并为服务提供者设计一个实用的工具，以改进方案目标定位。这种方法可能对寻求了解其客户群以监测和改进方案目标定位工作的国家、区域或地方服务提供者有用。
