Nutritional knowledge, attitudes and practices of primary caregivers of home grown school feeding programme pupils at Sauri millennium village, Siaya- Kenya

Abstract

School feeding programmes exist worldwide and provide only two thirds of undernourished children with a basic meal (WFP, 2009). Parents/ guardians are important to the long-term adoption of various health practices as they play a major role as primary caregivers. Primary caregivers need to understand the benefits of and reasons for various healthy eating practices, as well as the reasons for designing and implementing a School Feeding Programme in certain ways. The objectives of this study were to determine the nutritional knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of primary caregivers of pupils on the Home Grown School Feeding Programme and to investigate the correlation between demographic and socio-economic factors and the KAP. A cross-sectional descriptive survey was carried out at the Sauri Millennium Village in Nyanza Province, Kenya. Data were collected using structured questionnaire administered to 271 primary caregivers. Focus Group Discussions and Key Informant Interviews were also held to collect qualitative data. Data were presented using graphs and frequency tables and managed using SPSS software version 12.0. Results showed that 84% of the respondents had a high level of nutritional knowledge, 9% had average knowledge and 7% had low knowledge. Majority of the respondents had positive attitudes towards nutrition education and the Home Grown School Feeding Programme and negative attitudes towards the school meals. The respondents promoted good nutrition by preparing balanced family meals and involving children in meal preparation. However, they were inconsistent in daily provision of breakfast and fruits to school children. Nutritional knowledge had a weak positive correlation to the age of the respondent (r=-0.343,p = 0.01) and no significant association with the education level (p=0.07), source of nutritional information (p=0.14) and participation in the programme design (p=0.18). Education level had a significant association with attitude towards quality of school meals (p=0.01). Quality of family meals was significantly associated with education level (p=0.01), marital status (p=0.02), source of family foods (p=0.02). The study concluded that primary caregivers of pupils on the HGSF programme had nutrition knowledge gaps despite the community nutrition education and faced challenges in provision of fruits and breakfast for school children. Based on these findings, the study recommends promotion of continous nutrition education for primary caregivers through a multi-sectoral approach, promotion of interventions that improve quality and quantity of school meals e.g school gardens, mainstreaming of nutrition in agriculture interventions to increase food and nutrition security and addressing of factors influencing nutritional KAP in community nutrition programme design and implementation.

Department of Community Health, 67 p. The TX 361 .C5M8 2012