This centrally sponsored scheme was launched on October 2, 1975 for early childhood care by providing for supplementary nutrition, immunization and pre-school education to the children.

Objectives

• To improve the nutritional and health status of children in the age-group 0-6 years;                                                                                                        
• To lay the foundation for proper psychological, physical and social development of the child;
• To reduce the incidence of mortality, morbidity, malnutrition and school dropout;
• To achieve effective co-ordination of policy and implementation amongst the various departments to promote child development; and
• To enhance the capability of the mother to look after the normal health and nutritional needs of the child through proper nutrition and health education.

Beneficiaries

• Children in the age group of 0-6 years
• Pregnant women and Lactating mothers
• The ICDS Scheme offers a package of six services, viz. supplementary nutrition; pre-school non-formal education; nutrition & health education; immunization; health check-up; and referral services.

Performance Evaluation of ICDS                                                                                                                                                                          

The services under the ICDS scheme are provided at the platform of Anganwadi Centre (AWC). As per a report by Programme Evaluation Organization(PEO) of NITI Aayog submitted in June 2015, ICDS covers 8.4 crore out of the total 16.45 crore children of age below 6 years in the country and 1.91 crore pregnant and lactating mothers through 7,066 projects and 13.42 lakh AWCs.

Major highlights of report are following-

• It was found that 75.7% of AWCs are maintaining records properly, however, problems were noticed in records maintained by the remaining 24.3% of AWCs.
• It was noticed that 99% of AWCs are providing mothers counselling on the child healthcare and 68.6% of AWCs are intervening on children’s malnutrition.
• Further, 22.5% of AWCs do not have the required medicines for the children.
• Scrutiny of health records maintained by AWCs for the month of December, 2013 revealed 74.6 %, 19.7 % and 5.7 % of children had Normal (N), moderately malnourished (MM) and severely malnourished (SM) health respectively.
• The on the spot weight measurement carried out by the evaluation teams during April, 2014 revealed that 77.4 %, 17.6% and 5 % of the sample children had N, MM and SM health status.
• Physical verification of the infrastructure and supports provided to AWCs revealed that 59% of them have adequate space, and thus the remaining 41% have either shortage of space or unsuitable accommodation. It was also found that 40% of AWCs have their own accommodation and the remaining 60% are located in rented accommodations.
• Study found that 86.3% of AWCs have drinking water facilities and the remaining 13.7% do not have safe drinking water facilities. Further, the hygiene conditions at AWCs require improvement as only 48.2% of them are maintaining good hygiene condition.

Suggestions

• Adequate space should be provided to accommodate the enrolled children and the Centers should be located at a convenient and hygiene friendly area of the locality.
• AWC accommodation should be equipped with proper facilities viz. sanitation facilities, safe drinking water, toilets, sufficient medicines, electricity/power supply, playing instruments/toys, etc. The centers should be protected with boundary walls or barbed wires.
• Adequate number of workers should be engaged in each AWC. The monthly honorarium fixed for AWC workers/helpers seems to need enhancement. Further, the AWC workers should not be deployed for other works.
• Regular training should be provided to AWC workers and their supervisors. Further they should get refresher training to handle registers and other records independently.
• Doctors should visit AWCs regularly.