983.42 lakh beneficiaries being currently provided services under ICDS

The Integrated Child Development Services [ICDS] Scheme is one of the flag ship programmes. The Scheme provides a package of six services viz. supplementary nutrition, immunization, referral services, health check-up, pre-school non-formal education and health and nutrition education. In order to address various programmatic, management and institutional gaps and to meet administrative and operational challenges, Government approved the Strengthening and Restructuring of ICDS Scheme in September 2012 with an over-all budget allocation of Rs.1,23,580 crore during 12th Five Year Plan. The restructured ICDS has been implemented across the country in a phased manner.

The key features of Strengthened and Restructured ICDS inter-alia include addressing the gaps and challenges with (a) special focus on children under 3 years and Pregnant Women and Lactating Mothers (b) strengthening and repackaging of services including , care and nutrition counseling services and care of severely underweight children (c) a provision for an additional Anganwadi Worker cum Nutrition Counselor for focus on children under 3 years of age and to improve the family contact, care and nutrition counseling for P&L Mothers in the selected 200 high-burden districts across the country, besides having provision of link worker, 5% Crhe-cum-Anganwadi centre (d) focus on Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) (e) forging strong institutional and programmatic convergence particularly, at the district, block and village levels (f) models providing flexibility at local levels for community participation (g) introd uction of APIP (h) improving Supplementary Nutrition Programme including cost revision, (i) provision for construction and improvement of buildings of Anganwadi centres (j) allocating adequate financial resources for other components including Monitoring and Management and Information System(MIS), Training and use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), (k) to put ICDS in a mission mode etc. and (l) revision of financial norms etc.

The Integrated Child Development Services [ICDS] Scheme was universalized in 2008-09 so as to cover all habitations, including Scheduled Castes/ Scheduled Tribes and minority population, across the country with the approval of 7076 ICDS Projects and 14 lakh Anganwadi Centres. Against 7076 sanctioned Projects and 14 lakh sanctioned Anganwadi Centres, 7075 Projects and 13.55 lakh Anganwdi Centres are operational as on 31.03.2017. All the Anganwadi Centres are covered under restructured ICDS Scheme. The services are currently being provided to 983.42 lakh beneficiaries of which 800.73 lakh are children under age of six years and 182.69 lakh are pregnant women & lactating mothers. Pre-school education is provided to 340.52 lakh children of 3-6 years (171.11 lakh are boys and 169.41 lakh are girls).

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