The Feeding Practices Monitoring Tool is designed to help programs track progress in achieving key practices/behaviors related to infant and young child feeding on an ongoing basis. The tool tracks behaviors at the individual level at each counseling or contact point with the community health worker, thereby providing a record of progress toward reaching an optimal mix of practices for the child.
The tool is also designed so that data can be aggregated in real-time (rather than only at annual, mid-term, or end-of-project points) to assess changes in infant and young child feeding practices at the community, or possibly program level. Through this function, it serves as a supervision support and program management tool. The data collected through this tool cannot be used to draw conclusions about program outcomes.
While primarily designed to be a practices monitoring device (i.e., data collection method), since it is an individual child record, it could also be adapted to serve as a support for negotiation of practices with the mother/caregiver and/or a reminder tool.