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.
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.
Design
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.
Influence
Where to start?
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.