Disability-Inclusive Nutrition Programming Saves Lives!

Nearly 240 million children worldwide live with disabilities, most in low- and middle-income countries with limited access to necessary support. Feeding difficulties, such as chewing or swallowing issues, affect up to 80% of children with disabilities and up to 45% of children without disabilities. These difficulties can hinder a child’s health, development, and quality of life, reducing opportunities for social interaction during meals—vital moments for building connections within families, communities, and cultures. Addressing these feeding difficulties requires comprehensive and tailored solutions.

Every child has the right to healthy food and essential nutritional support, as strengthened by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, many barriers often prevent children with disabilities from enjoying these rights.

To achieve a world where every child, including those with disabilities, has access to the nutrition they need to survive and thrive, Save the Children and partners advocate for intentional disability-inclusive nutrition services.

Transforming Nutrition Programming

Feeding and nutrition difficulties faced by children with disabilities can be effectively addressed by integrating disability inclusion into all nutrition programs and policies. This involves training healthcare providers in disability-inclusive health services, including adapted nutrition counseling.

To make a real difference, concrete actions are needed. Save the Children encourages stakeholders and relevant actors to:

• mainstream disability inclusion in nutrition services by identifying and managing feeding difficulties 
• detect developmental delays and disabilities during health and nutrition assessments, and
• provide robust support to caregivers of children with disabilities
• promote disability inclusion within health facilities and broader communities

To make nutrition equality a reality for children with disabilities, Save the Children partnered with SPOON, a global nonprofit dedicated to empowering caregivers around the world to nourish children who are at high risk of malnutrition. This partnership has led to significant advancements in our nutrition programming, particularly in Somaliland, where SPOON supported the development and delivery of a pilot training on disability-inclusion for frontline healthcare workers.

Partnering for Impact

In Somaliland, SPOON supported nutrition programming by developing and delivering a pilot training for frontline healthcare workers in Disability-Inclusive Management of small and nutritionally at-risk Infants under 6 months and their mothers (MAMI). The Disability-Inclusive MAMI Training for Frontline Workers equips facilitators to train frontline workers on understanding, counseling, and addressing disabilities in both infants and their mothers, focusing on inclusion, feeding strategies, and effective communication. It consists of six modules, each with a facilitator’s guide and handouts, and is best delivered by a disability advisor or expert, ideally co-facilitated with a representative from an Organization of Persons with Disabilities (OPD).

Post-training evaluations in Somaliland showed that this training strengthened the capacity of healthcare workers, empowering them to provide inclusive services for both infants with disabilities and mothers with disabilities. To learn more about this groundbreaking training and to adopt in your own programming, access it here:

Learn more about SPOON’s work by taking their e-course or visiting their resource library.

Concrete Actions for Nutrition Equality

The partnership with SPOON in Somaliland has been a great success, demonstrating the impact of disability-inclusive nutrition services. However, many children globally still lack access to these essential services. To address this gap, it is crucial for humanitarian and development actors to integrate disability inclusion across all nutrition programming. Leading this change, Save the Children has developed the Disability-Inclusive Infant and Young Child Feeding (IYCF) Package.

This resource stands out for its breadth and ease of use. It includes a user-friendly slide deck organized by the socioecological model, making it easy to navigate and apply in various contexts, including emergencies and humanitarian settings.

The Disability-Inclusive IYCF Package is intended for health workers, technical officers, program managers, specialists, academics, and others involved in IYCF. It provides comprehensive global resources that support the inclusion of mothers, infants, and young children with disabilities in nutrition programs. By using this package, professionals can adapt current IYCF activities or create new ones to support pregnant or breastfeeding women with disabilities, caregivers with disabilities, and infants and young children with disabilities.

This package’s unique contribution lies in its practical tools and resources that empower professionals to create inclusive nutrition programs, ensuring every child receives the support they need to thrive.

Please note that there is a Save the Children staff version of this package with links to Save the Children’s Nourishing the Youngest Common Approach technical guidance available here (internal access only).

Additionally, Save the Children experts have curated a collection of resources from the Disability-Inclusive IYCF Package, focusing on the most applicable to IYCF-E contexts. These resources help professionals include mothers, infants, and young children with disabilities in nutrition programs at various levels of the IYCF model. To access these valuable tools, visit the following link: Disability-Inclusive IYCF Entry Points & Tools

These practical tools have been crafted to break barriers that children with disabilities, mothers with disabilities, and caretakers encounter in nutrition services. By applying these tools, practitioners can ensure that every child receives the nutrition they need to thrive.

Uniting for Global Disability Inclusion

Addressing disability-inclusive nutrition and feeding is both timely and crucial for humanitarian and development practitioners. Health and nutrition frontline workers, technical officers, and specialists in IYCF programming are urged to join Save the Children’s call to action:

• Mainstream disability inclusion across all nutrition programs and policies to ensure accessibility and full participation of caregivers and children with disabilities.
• Train healthcare providers in disability-inclusive services, including nutrition counseling, to reduce barriers and enhance patient experiences.

Save the Children calls on you to share this article in your networks; join hands in fostering disability-inclusive infant and young child nutrition and feeding efforts worldwide!

Please contact Save the Children’s disability team if you have any questions. For further learning about disability-inclusive nutrition programming, please explore the drop-down: