Nurturing Care refers to a stable environment created by parents and other caregivers that ensures, with policy, service and community support children's good health and nutrition, protects them from threats, and gives young children opportunities for early learning, through interactions that are emotionally supportive and responsive.
At birth, the nervous system of newborns, even after a full-term gestation, is not fully developed. The human brain continues to grow and develop postnatally at a rapid rate and becomes increasingly complex as growth progresses.
Early childhood experiences have a profound impact on brain development—affecting learning, health, behavior and ultimately, adult social relationships and their earnings.
For healthy development, young children's brains depend on loving and sensitive care, which requires coordinated action among multiple sectors.
While nurturing care for infants is natural to our human survival, it can be undermined by stressors and challenges that may arise in the environment in which small babies are immersed.
Nurturing care consists of five inter-related components: health, nutrition, safety and security, early learning, and responsive care. Small children need all five domains of nurturing care to meet their developmental potential.
It sets the basis for lifelong health and well-being in the child who becomes an adolescent, then an adult, and, in the future, the next generation, supporting the building of human capital that economies need to diversify in order to grow and succeed.
