The Child Well-Being Tracking Tool (CWTT) has been developed by the South African Research Chairs and academic collaborators in consultation with practitioners in the respective communities. The tool has been used to assess how children are faring in learning, health, nutrition and growth, resilience, and psychosocial well-being. It also assesses how the sampled children’s caregivers are faring in relation to their family and social functioning, child-caregiver relations, behavioural management, monitoring of children’s progress, engagement in schooling, meeting of basic needs, and mental health. The tool includes validated scales such as the Child and Youth Resilience Measure (child version) and the Strengths and Difficulties questionnaire as well as anthropometric measurements conducted by Public Health Care nurses. Learning assessments have been developed by the South African Research Chair in Education and Care in Childhood who is responsible for conducting the psychometric assessments with children. The tool also includes a pre-test and post- test in number concept development and reading, using standardised tools for the children in the sample drawn from the five-school population. This component is conducted by the South African Research Chair in Integrated Studies of Learning Language, Mathematics and Science in the Primary School.

The CWTT has been developed as a digital online tracking tool in which fieldworkers can enter information electronically, and vulnerable/ at risk children are red flagged for referral to appropriate community services. In the future the tool will also be used by the LLCoP participants, who will be able to see what the key challenge areas are for children in their school, to inform their planning and practice.