''Covid-19 Pandemic and Early Childhood Care: Assessing the Impact on Children Enrolled with Sangini BalSEWA Centres''

While mothers across the world struggled with the sudden closure of institutional childcare facilities due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdown called thereafter, its impact on children, especially those below the age of 6, remained comparatively unknown.The present study aims to fill this gap to an extent, by attempting to ascertain the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown on children below the age of six who belong to poor and marginalised households. The study specifically focuses on children who have been attending the BalSEWA centres run by SEWA in Ahmedabad, Gujarat through their Sangini Co-operative and aims to highlight the benefits that a full-day childcare centre can have not only for children in terms of holistic growth and development but also for their mothers and the larger community, if it is nurtured with the sense of 'being there for each other'. While the study primarily was designed to assess the impact of the closure on the physical well-being and mental disposition of the children, as they were locked inside their houses with no specific routine and little adult supervision, it also ended up highlighting the support that Sangini Sevikas provided to these families even during the lockdown months.The study was conducted through a mixed method approach. All data has been rounded off to the nearest whole number