Child health promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic: A health and welfare sector collaboration

African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Child health promotion during the COVID-19 pandemic: A health and welfare sector collaboration
 
Creator Ntshingila, Nompumelelo du Plessis-Faurie, Alida S.
 
Subject Primary health; Social work; Nursing; Primary health care nursing children; collaboration; COVID-19 pandemic; health promotion; well-being.
Description Background: Fragmented service provision and a lack of efficient cooperation between health and welfare sectors serving children and families remain ongoing challenges in South Africa. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic escalated this fragmentation. A community of practice (CoP) was established by the Centre for Social Development in Africa to promote collaboration between the sectors and to assist communities in their environments.Aim: To explore and describe collaboration on child health promotion between professional nurses and social workers, who formed part of the CoP during the COVID-19 pandemic.Setting: The study was conducted in five public schools from four of the seven district regions of the City of Johannesburg, Gauteng province.Methods: A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive research design was employed to conduct psychosocial and health screenings of children and their families. Focus group interviews were conducted, and field notes were used to collect and confirm data from the team.Results: Four themes emerged. Participants shared their positive and negative experiences faced during the fieldwork, their realisation of the value of collaboration between various sectors and their desire and capacity to do more.Conclusion: Participants indicated that collaboration between the health and welfare sectors is vital to support and promote the health of children and their families. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for collaboration between these sectors in the children and their families’ ongoing struggles.Contribution: The importance of these sectors being engaged as a team highlighted the multisectoral influence shaping child development outcomes, supporting children’s human rights and advancing social and economic justice.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor National Research Fund
Date 2023-02-13
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative research
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/phcfm.v15i1.3767
 
Source African Journal of Primary Health Care & Family Medicine; Vol 15, No 1 (2023); 9 pages 2071-2936 2071-2928
 
Language eng
 
Relation
The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3767/6069 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3767/6070 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3767/6071 https://phcfm.org/index.php/phcfm/article/view/3767/6072
 
Coverage South Africa 2020 Professional nurses; social workers
Rights Copyright (c) 2023 Nompumelelo Ntshingila, Alida S. du Plessis-Faurie https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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