Real Time Monitoring of Child Wellbeing

The Real Time Monitoring of Child Wellbeing project is a collaborative effort between the Department of Social Development, UNICEF and SAM which commenced in 2019 with the development and testing of integrated technology to enable data gathering and analysis for care and protection of vulnerable children and families at municipality levels.

The integrated technology, referred to as the Real Time Monitoring Tool (RTMT) is a multi-platform mobile application that enables the production of real time data and includes data management and visualisation (such as bar charts, pie charts, infographics and trend analysis) capabilities. The RTMT enables the capturing of data including children’s demographic information and their wellbeing status related to seven domains namely; education, economic strengthening, childcare and protection (including violence and abuse), health, nutrition, HIV/AIDS and psychosocial support. The application enables the creation of a care plan for individual children using the data that is gathered and provides a basis for tracking and following up on cases. It's designed to capture data on children with disabilities and enables early screening and referral to specialised services.

Having successfully piloted the RTMT as part of the national rapid assessment of child-wellbeing, the project will imminently be scaled up as it is rolled out in multiple districts based on DSD provincial plans. Data gathered through this project is used to inform governments’ response to the needs of vulnerable children including strengthening prevention and early interventions for child protection.