Community Scorecard Training Manual: Building a foundation for implementing the Community Score Card

The activity focuses on increasing availability and management of key health systems resources, including human resources for health, and strengthening community systems for quality health services. The Community Score Card is a key component of the UHSS Activity, which enables citizens to contribute to the efficiency and effectiveness of healthcare interventions. The Community Score Card is rooted in experience in applying the concept to enable citizens articulate and demand their rights and meaningfully engage with service providers to improve management of public resources and delivery of health services. Access to quality healthcare is a right that requires right holders to demand entitlements and duty bearers to fulfill their obligations. Citizens are at both ends of the equation, as right holders who should demand health policies and programs that are responsive to their needs and priorities, and as duty bearers with an obligation to take necessary actions to prevent ill health and death and seek healthcare. Monitoring is a critical component of the Community Score Card process, which involves systematic tracking of activities of various duty bearers to ensure that they happen as planned, deliver the desired goods, and the intended beneficiaries receive the services in time with participation of the target groups. Community-based monitoring, or social accountability, is a form of public oversight that relies on civic engagement where citizens and civil society organizations directly or indirectly participate in extracting accountability. The concept of social accountability aims to develop a framework of how citizens demand and enforce accountability on those in power. It is an approach towards building accountability that relies on civic engagement whereby ordinary citizens and/or civil society organizations participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability. The concept of social accountability underlines both the right and the corresponding responsibility of citizens to expect and ensure that government acts in the best interest of the people. The training manual is designed to equip trainers with knowledge and skills on how to effectively implement the Community Score Card. The overall goal of the training is to equip the trainers with knowledge and skills on how to effectively implement the Community Score Card. The objectives of the training include demonstrating skills needed to plan and conduct the training program at the next level, facilitating free participation and expression of ideas, and promoting decentralized inputs for better planning of health activities. Climate setting is key to free participation and expression of ideas, and this session allows participants and their trainers to know each other and agree on how they are going to work together. The trainer is expected to follow the order in the manual if he/she is to achieve the objectives of the training. A pre and post training evaluation will be conducted by the trainer, and the training is expected to last for 3 days. The target group for this manual is community-based staff of the UHSS Activity. The training is designed to equip the trainers with knowledge and skills on how to effectively implement the Community Score Card, and by the end of the training, the trained trainers will be able to demonstrate skills needed to plan and conduct the training program at the next level, facilitate free participation and expression of ideas, and promote decentralized inputs for better planning of health activities. The Community Score Card process involves several key components, including monitoring, community-based monitoring, social accountability, and health systems strengthening. Monitoring is a critical component of the Community Score Card process, which involves systematic tracking of activities of various duty bearers to ensure that they happen as planned, deliver the desired goods, and the intended beneficiaries receive the services in time with participation of the target groups. Community-based monitoring, or social accountability, is a form of public oversight that relies on civic engagement where citizens and civil society organizations directly or indirectly participate in extracting accountability. The concept of social accountability aims to develop a framework of how citizens demand and enforce accountability on those in power. It is an approach towards building accountability that relies on civic engagement whereby ordinary citizens and/or civil society organizations participate directly or indirectly in exacting accountability. Health systems strengthening is a critical component of the UHSS Activity, which involves identifying and implementing changes in policy and practice in a country's health system, so that the country can respond better to its health and health system challenges. The process of health systems strengthening involves any array of initiatives and strategies that improves one or more of the functions of the health system and that leads to better health through improvements in access, coverage, quality, or efficiency.