Delivering services to children

Industrial nations have explored ways to help their poorer citizens get a better start in life for the past thirty years. Much of what they have learned can be used by early child development programs everywhere. An important lesson is that social deficits must be simultaneously attacked on several fronts: nutrition, health care, and education. This lesson underlies the U.S. Head Start program and the Special Supplementation Nutrition Program for Women and Infant Children (WIC). Programs in developing countries that deliver integrated services on a massive scale to help poor cizldren flourish as tinny grow, such as India's Integrated Child Development Services and Colombia's Community Child Care and Nutrition Project, recognize this lesson as well.