How to use the Proximity of Care Design Guide?

The guide is structured around four sections that represent the main stages in the life cycle of an urban project: Understand, Design, Implement and Influence.

Each stage contains clear steps to guide you through the process of adopting a child and family-friendly approach at every point of a project. Although the four main stages are presented as a linear process, they can be accessed and used in any order, have a look below at our recommendation of the best place to start. Be creative in adapting the steps to the needs, maturity and iterations of your project, to ensure you are addressing the interaction of needs of the community you are seeking to benefit. Under each stage you will find tailored actions or recommendations that will help you mainstream this approach in your work.

Understand

The design of effective interventions begins with understanding.

Explore the child-friendly approach to the starting steps of a project, and how to better understand the constraints and needs of young children, their caregivers and pregnant women in your targeted area. Discover how the Proximity of Care Framework can support you in exploring the relation among various urban systems and children’s developmental needs. Identify the right way to measure success along your project.

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Design

Make the right design choices for impactful interventions.
Explore how to bring children’s perspective in different design activities, and how to integrate them with caregivers’ and other stakeholders’ priorities. Identify design choices that will optimise the social, economic and environmental effectiveness of your projects. See examples from around the globe of projects that demonstrate practical, clear and creative ways for designing child-centred interventions.
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Implement

Put your project into practice with community collaboration following the shared vision.

Explore practical examples and insights to embed child- and family friendly principles in your delivery process, to inform your investments, and deliver healthy, protective, stimulating and supportive environments for young children. In this stage you will find relevant guidance on how to implement a Pilot or a Public Launch or how to think about future Maintenance and Impact Measurement.

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Influence

Gain and sustain support for your project and a child-friendly approach.
Explore how to influence professionals, decision makers, community champions and other stakeholders, on the need for, and value of, child- and family-friendly interventions in urban contexts. This stage is relevant across different steps, advocating for impact across the project life cycle.
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Where to start?

Before you start exploring the four stages and steps of the Proximity of Care Design Guide, you may want to familiarise yourself with the Proximity of Care Framework, which is at the core of the guide and provides a holistic approach to understanding the city systems and their relationship and influence on early childhood development, at different scales of urban proximity and human interaction.

Also, have a look at the guiding principles which serve as a basis to support you as you put the guide into practice, and consider the needs of young children, caregivers and pregnant women across the life cycle of your project.

Another overarching component of the guide that you can start exploring is the Knowledge Hub. It is a library of best practice examples of relevant projects from around the globe, tools that can help you apply the Proximity of Care Design Guide, as well as the latest insights, content and news on creating child and family-friendly cities. This is a place where you can explore the entire collection of resources that are embedded in the life cycle and form the main content of the guide.

City authorities, you may want to start by assessing how the four dimensions of the framework, and the ten guiding principles, relate to your strategies, policies or a specific project.

Urban practitioners, you may want to start with a detailed exploration of the Proximity of Care dimensions of child development – health, protection, stimulation and support – and the goals embedded within each one of them. They may expand your understanding of the intervention scope in a specific location.

Early childhood development practitioners, you may want to start with the ten guiding principles and the dimensions of the framework, particularly the scales of proximity to support the strategy of your programmes. You may want to review some case studies to be inspired by the practical solutions that child and family-friendly urban planning and design can bring towards achieving developmental goals.

Developers, you may want to start by exploring the ten guiding principles, as they can serve as a basis for creating a child and family-friendly development brief. Desk-based baseline and Measuring impact  will give you an insight into scoping studies that can support you in aligning with ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) policies or frameworks.