Found and Growing
Every child found. Every missed service followed.
Found & Growing is Santé Initiative Uganda’s integrated early childhood health and family-resilience model reaching children and families across communities, including refugee and host populations. It identifies children and families who are missing essential services and helps reconnect them to care from pregnancy through the early years.
The programme goes beyond immunisation to support access to the wider package of services children need to survive, grow, develop and thrive – including maternal and newborn care, nutrition, growth monitoring, developmental screening, WASH and caregiver support.
Child Care
What We Do
We help families stay connected to essential care across the early years.
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Maternal and newborn health — Link mothers to antenatal care, safe facility delivery and postnatal follow-up, including family planning, helping ensure that both mother and baby remain connected to care.
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Immunisation and child health screening — Identify children who have missed routine vaccinations and support follow-up, while supporting access to routine child health and developmental screening, including vision, hearing, growth monitoring and early identification of developmental concerns.
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Nutrition and healthy growth — Promote exclusive breastfeeding, vitamin supplementation, deworming, nutrition screening and timely referral and management of children at risk of malnutrition.
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Early development and responsive caregiving — Equip caregivers with practical skills in early stimulation, responsive care, positive discipline and supporting children’s learning and development at home.
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Water, sanitation and hygiene — Promote safe water, hygiene and sanitation practices that reduce preventable illness in homes and community settings.
Every 1 in 3 children miss essential health services they need to grow & thrive.
How it Works
Five steps that help ensure no child is lost between home, community
and the health system.
- Find and track — A live, offline-capable, multilingual child and family register identifies services due, missed contacts, referrals and follow-up outcomes.
- Follow up and close the loop — Missed vaccinations, growth checks, maternal or newborn appointments, nutrition services and referrals become documented follow-up tasks for community health workers.
- Bring services closer — Community outreach and mobile neighbourhood hubs bring selected services, screening, health information and referral closer to families.
- Support caregivers — Families receive practical guidance on nutrition, responsive caregiving, early stimulation, WASH and when and where to seek care.
- Strengthen the system — Use programme learning and data to help Government and partners spot gaps, improve follow-up and make it easier for families to move between community and facility-based care.
Partnerships and Sustainability
A community health workforce that turns missed care into completed care
Found & Growing equips trained community health and para-social workers to identify children and families who are missing essential services, provide trusted health information, support household follow-up, mobilise communities, facilitate referrals and help families navigate care.
Working alongside health facilities, VHT structures and local government systems, they help connect families to essential early childhood interventions.
Caregivers receive reminders and trusted health information through SMS, voice, WhatsApp and USSD, with community health workers providing assisted support where needed. Information is delivered in familiar languages and designed to work even in low-literacy and low-connectivity settings.