Nourishing Connections

"Listening carefully and sharing your personal experience during the session will make the caregiver more comfortable speaking with you about them and their situation."

Developed by Breakthrough ACTION and USAID Advancing Nutrition, this set of two booklets provides detailed instructions for community health workers (CHWs) to counsel mothers on child feeding in a compassionate way. The job aid is designed to help CHWs support mothers in improving feeding practices for children 6 to 24 months through tailored discussions and problem solving. The accompanying supporting tools document includes tools that can help CHWs as they engage with caregivers through other dynamic activities.

The design process for these tools began with research in Kebbi State, Nigeria, with CHWs, caregivers, family members, and community members to better understand child feeding challenges from their perspectives. With these insights, Breakthrough ACTION and USAID Advancing Nutrition carried out an iterative design and testing (human-centred design) process whose goal was to develop tools to help CHWs practice compassionate counseling on nutrition. Meant to be simple, the resulting tools are designed to transform the way CHWs interact with caregivers and fellow community members around nutrition.

The CHW job aid has 4 linked components:

1. Empathways: Creates an empathic counseling session that shifts the experience of care so caregivers feel confident communicating their needs and trust CHW advice. One specific approach involves the CHW and caregiver sharing some personal information that is not about the immediate issue, which can help build trusted connections. Sharing personal information can also help reduce the power imbalance between the perceived expert and the person being counseled, which can further foster compassionate care.
2. Assessment: Offers questions to help CHWs and caregivers understand the current situation.
3. Counseling Flow: Enables CHWs to focus actively on one or two topics most relevant for the caregiver at that time.
4. Action Plan: Asks caregivers to identify specific steps they will take between counseling sessions.

The supporting tools are meant to facilitate interactive and engaging home visits and community activities: a price comparison, trivia, and card game.

Although the tools were designed in Nigeria, Breakthrough ACTION and USAID Advancing Nutrition developed them with global adaptation in mind and encourage such adaptation.