Early childhood partners join forces to use followkids to connect child data to Child Impact

On 16 March B.E. 2569, Bureau 4 and early childhood partners, including S.K.S. (developer of followkids.in.th), ESTA, SOPA, Suan (Toemtem) and the evaluation team, held an online meeting to plan a mechanism for systematically connecting early childhood development data from various partners to Child Impact.

The meeting agreed to use followkids as the sole shared tool for collecting child development data (DSPM), as it is a system developed by NECTEC and already holds data on more than 16,000 children collected through the work of village health volunteers and Subdistrict Health Promoting Hospitals nationwide. Baseline-endline data from 9,268 children in followkids is now displayed on the Child Impact dashboard. Meanwhile, the team has sent specifications to the followkids development team to establish an automated data connection through an API, with the aim of making it ready for use by April B.E. 2569.

In addition to DSPM data, other partners have further data to connect to the system. ESTA has system-level outcome data at child development centres (CDCs), and the partners will discuss the data fields in more detail. The same applies to data from screening children’s development using UNDP’s 20-question framework, carried out by Toemtem. More than 3,000 children have been screened; around 500 were identified in the yellow and red groups, and more than 100 have already received assistance. SOPA is preparing to submit DSPM data for around 100 children in an Excel file for entry into the system at a later stage.

The meeting agreed that DSPM data would primarily be collected through followkids, while other partner data would be considered field by field as appropriate and updated at least once a year. The target is to complete the DSPM baseline-endline data by the end of B.E. 2569.