It can be difficult for children, especially those with special needs, to understand the importance of handwashing. This, therefore, calls for the caregivers to support them maintain good hand hygiene.
Parents/caregivers can help children engage in meaningful proper hygiene activities/routines to increase a child’s independence and hence encourage them to practise good hygiene behaviours such as handwashing, bathing and wearing clean clothes.
Parents and caregivers can encourage children to wash their hands after their playing routine, before they eat, wiping surfaces and playing objects. This will be a key step in ensuring that children adopt good hygiene behaviour to prevent them from acquiring poor hygiene-related diseases as well as Covid-19.
How can caregivers support children with hand washing?
Caregivers should understand that different children have different understanding/ability levels and therefore, they should use behaviour change approaches respectively to cater for all.
The caregivers' support should aim at making the children as independent as possible when it comes to handwashing. Some children will require physical support to engage in handwashing while others will need verbal guidance in order to practise handwashing routine.
Emphasis, however, should be made on the steps of hand washing and also the critical times for handwashing.
For children with special needs, the caregivers can make hand washing more comfortable by keeping the child’s hands in theirs and going through the handwashing procedure together.
Handwashing behaviour should be encouraged among children, including special needs children, to keep them free from diseases. The value of using clean and running water for handwashing, use of soap for hand washing, and disinfecting surfaces should be instilled among children.
Hand washing should be made a habit in the community and, most especially, among children. When they adopt handwashing practice at a young age, the behaviour change will be effective as they grow and, hence, a healthy community.
Communication assistant, HBCC Project-Amref.
