Early Childhood Care and Development Responsiveness Local Government Unit Assessment Tool (ERLAT)

The Early Childhood Care and Development Responsiveness Local Government Unit Assessment Tool (ERLAT) can be used by local governments to identify ECCD interventions during the COVID-19 pandemic, focused on enabling multi-sectoral structures and service delivery. Findings of the ERLAT can describe how existing ECCD services have been impacted by COVID-19, particularly how services and their delivery mechanisms have changed as a response to the pandemic. Furthermore, it can describe how LGUs used multi-sectoral and inter-agency approaches where ECCD players at various levels are clearly defined “i.e. families, communities, non-government/private sector, local government units and national government agencies”.3 This baseline assessment can be used identifying gaps and weakness that LGUs need to work on towards toward strengthening and capacitating existing institutions to become more responsive to the needs of children and their families during disruptions. As many in the past have suggested that ECCD should be mainstreamed and should cut across sectors, what should be explored now is the extent to which those sectors are in conversation with one another, and whether or not they have the absorptive capacity to hold a conversation that can mainstream ECCD into existing institutions and local development plans.