Introduction Investing in children during the critical period between birth and age 5 years can have long-lasting benefits throughout their life. Children in Kenya’s urban informal settlements, face significant challenges to healthy development, particularly when their families need to earn a daily wage and cannot care for them during the day. In response, informal and poor quality child-care centres with untrained caregivers have proliferated. We aim to co-design and test the feasibility of a supportive assessment and skills-building for child-care centre providers. Methods and analysis A sequential mixed-methods approach will be used. We will map and profile child-care centres in two informal settlements in Nairobi, and complete a brief quality assessment of 50 child-care centres. We will test the feasibility of a supportive assessment skills-building system on 40 child-care centres, beginning with assessing centre-caregivers’ knowledge and skills in these centres. This will inform the subsequent co-design process and provide baseline data. Following a policy review, we will use experience-based co-design to develop the supportive assessment process. This will include qualitative interviews with policymakers (n=15), focus groups with parents (n=4 focus group discussions (FGDs)), child-care providers (n=4 FGDs) and joint workshops. To assess feasibility and acceptability, we will observe, record and cost implementation for 6 months. The knowledge/skills questionnaire will be repeated at the end of implementation and results will inform the purposive selection of 10 child-care providers and parents for qualitative interviews. Descriptive statistics and thematic framework approach will respectively be used to analyse quantitative and qualitative data and identify drivers of feasibility. Ethics and dissemination The study has been approved by Amref Health Africa’s Ethics and Scientific Review Committee (Ref: P7802020 on 20th April 2020) and the University of York (Ref: HSRGC 20th March 2020). Findings will be published and continual engagement with decision-makers will embed findings into child-care policy and practice.

中文翻译：

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通过支持性评估和在内罗毕非正式住区的“实践社区”提高托儿中心的质量：可行性研究方案

简介 在从出生到 5 岁的关键时期对儿童进行投资可以在他们的一生中获得长期的利益。肯尼亚城市非正规住区的儿童在健康发展方面面临重大挑战，尤其是当他们的家人需要赚取日薪而无法在白天照顾他们时。作为回应，拥有未经培训的看护人的非正式和低质量的托儿中心激增。我们的目标是共同设计和测试对托儿中心提供者进行支持性评估和技能建设的可行性。方法和分析 将使用顺序混合方法。我们将对内罗毕两个非正规住区的托儿中心进行地图绘制和概况介绍，并对 50 个托儿中心进行简要的质量评估。我们将在 40 个托儿中心测试支持性评估技能建设系统的可行性，首先评估这些中心的中心看护人的知识和技能。这将为随后的协同设计过程提供信息并提供基线数据。在政策审查之后，我们将使用基于经验的协同设计来开发支持性评估流程。这将包括与政策制定者 (n=15) 的定性访谈、与父母的焦点小组 (n=4 焦点小组讨论 (FGD))、托儿服务提供者 (n=4 FGD) 和联合研讨会。为了评估可行性和可接受性，我们将观察、记录和成本实施 6 个月。知识/技能问卷将在实施结束时重复，结果将告知有目的地选择 10 名儿童保育提供者和家长进行定性访谈。描述性统计和主题框架方法将分别用于分析定量和定性数据并确定可行性驱动因素。伦理和传播该研究已获得 Amref Health Africa 伦理和科学审查委员会（参考：P7802020，2020 年 4 月 20 日）和约克大学（参考：HSRGC，2020 年 3 月 20 日）的批准。调查结果将被公布，决策者的持续参与将调查结果嵌入儿童保育政策和实践中。高铁，2020 年 3 月 20 日）。调查结果将被公布，决策者的持续参与将调查结果嵌入儿童保育政策和实践中。高铁，2020 年 3 月 20 日）。调查结果将被公布，决策者的持续参与将调查结果嵌入儿童保育政策和实践中。