Abstract:To foster growth and development to toddlers, it includes age-appropriate self-care and provision of age-appropriate toys and activities from primary caregivers such as parents or family members. The mothers as primary caregivers of a toddler child in the Philippines, her key roles never stop, instead, it only evolves and enriches. Universal health care includes a comprehensive range of services, from health promotion and prevention throughout the childhood period including the first three years of life. To identify essential toddler care activities among mothers, concept synthesis and face to face interviews were done to first time and multigravida mothers to determine their assumed roles. From the results of these interviews, a tool was developed identifying childcare activities rendered by mothers perceived as their highest priorities. An instrument, Mother’s Assumed Toddler Care Role Instrument (MATCaRI) was developed to establish the components of basic to essential toddler care activities. To examine the major elements and define the construct of essential toddler care, content validation index was performed resulted to 0.87 (p=0.05) which included twelve components and reliability testing resulted using Cronbach α = 0.82 with 25 items surveyed on adolescent and multigravida mothers in the provinces of Cavite and Occidental Mindoro, Philippines. Mothers’ key roles in toddler care enriches and is evolving which includes optimal child health activities and services including home care activities, provision of safety, preventive or early intervention services for developmental and behavioral problems, acute and chronic care, coordination and follow-up for developmental problems provided by health professional, family and community for children ages 12 to 36 months. These findings can support WHO’S recommendation to use primary health care (PHC) approach grounding on what areas of toddler care mothers can be capacitated on for the improvement of health services they need, where and when they need them.
Keywords: Health Systems and Universal Health Coverage (UHC), Key words: Toddler care, maternal role assumption, essential toddler care
