Round Table Expert Meeting Children’s Care and DHS/MICS Data: Final Meeting Report

Better Care Network

The Better Care Network (BCN) and the Child Protection Monitoring and Evaluation Reference Group (MERG) organized a two-day round table meeting between 9-11 September 2014, to explore how data regarding the living and care situations of children can be better used to provide insight into their vulnerability, and to guide more targeted policies, services and interventions on their behalf.

The round table meeting aimed to address the following questions:

  • How can existing data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (MICS) and other data sets be better mined to understand children’s living and care arrangements?
  • What additional data would be useful to collect regarding children’s living and care arrangements?

Specifically, the round table meeting aimed to identify and discuss:

  1. Available data within existing DHS/MICS questionnaires that is care-relevant, its potential and limitations in terms of use for monitoring children’s care situations, and its links to child-well being outcomes.
  2. Challenges and solutions for collecting, extracting and analyzing this data systematically.
  3. The process for revisions, additions and clarifications of DHS and MICS questionnaires.
  4. How to make the case for systematic use of care-relevant data with key country level actors.
  5. Complimentary use of other relevant data sets (e.g. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS), national census data) to provide a more comprehensive picture of children’s care situations.
  6. Whether there is a need for additional indicators of care vulnerability.
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