Perceived Quality of Care and Beneficiary Characteristics in Anganwadi Centers in a Borough of Kolkata.

Dr. Somak Majumdar; Dr. Aparajita Dasgupta; Dr. Nabarun Karmakar

Volume : VII, Issue : VI, June - 2017

Perceived Quality of Care and Beneficiary Characteristics in Anganwadi Centers in a Borough of Kolkata.

Dr. Somak Majumdar, Dr. Aparajita Dasgupta, Dr. Nabarun Karmakar

Abstract :

BACKGROUND – ICDS programme, the largest of its kind in the world, has been rendering services to the children, mothers and adolescents since 1975. But still there remains a long way to go to achieve its intended objectives. Quality of care has been an issue worth pondering since the inception of the programme which has been compounded upon by the poor monitoring and lackluster performance of the programme. OBJECTIVES – To find out the socio–demographic and economic conditions of mothers of children from 6 months to 6 years of age visiting the ICDS centers and to assess the quality of care as perceived by the mothers of clients and to determine its covariates. METHODOLOGY – The study was conducted in all the 51 ICDS centers in Borough no.–14 of Kolkata Municipal Corporation. From each center 5 beneficiaries were chosen randomly seeing the previous year monthly attendance and 255 mothers of beneficiaries were interviewed during their exit by a structured schedule about their sociodemographic conditions and their perceived quality of care from the ICDS centers. RESULTS – The mean satisfaction score attained was 19.55 ± 2.838. 64.3% of the beneficiaries were satisfied with the quality of care. Quality of care among mothers of clients was unsatisfactory in mothers of higher age and satisfactory in mothers having higher per–capita income with significant odds after adjustment. CONCLUSION – Kolkata being an urban agglomeration pushes the awareness levels to prodigious heights and thus the quality of care becomes enhanced comparably to other places in West Bengal.