Dino Melaye, a disgrace to the Senate - Tinubu

30—Vanguard, THURSDAY, JULY 14, 2016
How early years
professional,
Mrs Itoro Ugorji,
is revolutionising
child care
•Itoro Ugorji
By Chioma Obinna
WHEN you think of child
care, your mind
automatically goes to women
irrespective of their status in the
society. According to the
UNICEF, pre-school age
corresponds to a critical period of
rapid physical, cognitive and
psychosocial development of the
child. The quality and intensity
of care, nutrition and stimulation
a child receives during this period
determines to a large extent the
level of physical and cognitive
development a child can attain.
Today, appreciable progress has
been made in early childhood
care; unfortunately, in Nigeria
caregivers of these centres are
generally unqualified. About 85
per cent do not possess basic
qualifications and more than half
have no formal education.
Poor state of
infrastructure
Investigations have shown that
another major issue in Nigeria’s
early childhood care and
development is the poor state of
the infrastructure, equipment,
facilities and learning resources.
Essential learning resources are
lacking in most facilities while the
national curriculum is not yet
widely operational.
Mrs. Itoro Ugorji, an Early Years
professional believes that early
childhood care centres remains
inadequate in Nigeria. The
Founder of Baby Lounge, an
independent facility, and
Kidstone, which focuses on
designing, set up and
management of crèches; said
childcare is an exciting and
fulfilling prospect for anyone with
a passion and natural energy for
children.
Itoro spoke to Chioma
Obinna on the need for
Besides learning,
care is also critical.
We track their
development
periodically, we look
at how they develop
in different areas,
physical, and
emotional cognitive;
certain things and
skills
standardised childcare centres.
What motivated your interest
into child care?
I had always have interest in
child care. In Nigeria today, the
number of full-time housewives
in urban areas is on the decline.
Many women are working at
paid jobs or running their own
small businesses. As a result of
this trend, there is a growing
opportunity for convenience
services like crèche and day-care
centre businesses. Many of the
centres you find in the country
today cannot be classified as good
centres. We talk about work
and life balancing, the balance of
life comes from the family and the
other part should come from the
employer. Some companies have
spent a lot on less benefiting
projects, but setting up crèches
won’t cost much and it needs to
be run by proven professionals.
This is why our focus was
initially on the corporate
organisations. And what we are
looking forward to achieving is to
provide support for working
moms of young children, infant
and toddlers.
Working
mothers
We build, design, set up and
manage child care centres for
corporate organisations all in
effort to ensure that children of
working mothers do not suffer
and denied access to good
nutrition and education among
others. We work with children
in early years within age 0 to 5
years, so it’s care and education.
How would you describe your
outfit and what you do here?
The Baby Lounge is an
independent facility, of a
company called Kidstone. It is
not a school in strict sense of it,
but a support for parent.
We have managed to calve a
niche for ourselves. We go to
companies and convinced them
why they should have a crèche
for their female employees and
their babies within the work place.
We also educate people on how
to run the centre. Day care
centres are meant for
professionals not just anybody
because it has to do with the well
being of a child including early
development and education. We
could also go ahead and manage
it for you, which mean that, we
would bring in our expertise, a
team of professionals and
manage the day to day running,
of the facility.
But we realised in the process
that most companies have space
challenges, within their office, so
we decided to set up Baby
Lounge. At the Baby lounge,
companies are allowed to buy
block of spaces, and for such
subscriptions, we have group
discounts.
Again, another challenge is
location. It is very critical, which
is about comfortability, and that
was why we located where we
have the target markets. Many
Lagosians work in the Island.
How would you assess day care
centres in Nigeria?
Day care should not be a
business venture because we are
having the life of these children
entrusted to us, so it is a sensitive
thing and it should be treated as
such. Nowadays mothers are
contending with so much, and it
will be unfair to describe it as a
failure on the part of mothers.
Emotional and
cognitive
That is why we believe that day
care is not all about keeping a
child till the mom comes back to
pick him or her. Besides learning,
care is also critical. We track their
development periodically, we look
at how they develop in different
areas, physical, and emotional
cognitive; certain things and skills
a child is supposed to have
achieved in those areas, so we
track them and if a child is falling
short we are able to identify that
and communicate it to their
moms..
At the end of each day, we give
parents a report. For the toddlers
we teach them how to be
responsible, social skills, they
know how to interact and
appropriate behaviour. We also
have reading programmes and
the objective is to rekindle reading
culture among young children.
These children grow up very fast.
It is much more than academic.
How would an ideal crèche or
day care look like?
The environment alone must be
stimulating enough for a child to
be comfortable and learn. It has
to be clean, it has to be well laid
and well ventilated. Another
thing is content, what the children
are taught and the qualities of the
personnel in the centre.
We invested in surveillance,
CCTV so that we can monitor the
activities and interaction of
children and care givers.
Secondly, we located ourselves in
a building that is largely secured.
In which access is very limited.
What should be government’s
role in monitoring day care
centres?
The government needs to step
up their game in terms of putting
in place monitoring mechanisms
so that they have a data base of
every day-care and this has to be
updated regularly.
Proper
registration
There should be proper
registration and inspectors
should come out periodically to
check if standards are in place.
Periodically, we have inspectors
to check our facilities.
How should children be fed in
a day care?
We recommend that children
should not take juice; we
encourage water, nutritious food.
We say no to chololates and give
them our own recommendation.
We also have a food time table
that parents can subscribe to and
must abide with.
What will you say is the
uniqueness of this centre?
Employees are the lifeline of
any company and employees’
welfare is tied to the profitability
of any company.
They said generally that women
are more loyal employees, so we
need to think of how best to help
them and better ways of doing it
is by creating a welfare packages
that will help them to be top
performing employees and also
successful at raising the children
and supportive as wives.
The initiative ensures that while
women are at work, they know
that their children are close by,
safe and comfortable.
Why do we need professionals
to run Day care centres?
To prevent mothers running in
and out of the offices. The only
people allowed to check their
children are nursing mothers and
in case of emergency we allow the
mothers in, anything outside that
they have to wait till pick up time.