The Children's Nursing Educator's Forum (CNEF) hosted a third and last meeting for this year on 25 October 2023. We welcomed all our members from across Africa who prioritise children's nursing – colleagues from South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Rwanda, Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Eswatini. Jane Vos also welcomed members who recently joined from Ethiopia, Namibia, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda. We are proud to have all these partners together on this valuable platform.

Beatrix Callard, Doctoral Fellow in  the Harry Crossley Children's Nursing Development Unit, reminded members about the 2022 Children's Nursing Educators Forum Training Directory and report, that CNEF members contributed data for. On behalf of the Children’s Nursing Educators Forum, the CNDU  updates the data on the children's nursing workforce in Africa in response to SDG Target 3c, which looks at health worker density and distribution. The report depicts the number of children's nurses who completed training from 2015 until 2022. We encourage everyone with new information about who and where training is offered to share this information with Beatrix so she can update the workforce observatory data.

Prof Minette Coetzee hosted the main discussion of our last meeting. Her discussion related to developing a children's nursing core curriculum in collaboration with seven countries that were members of CNEF in 2019. The core curriculum was designed based on knowing what the users expect and the nature of healthcare systems providing care to children in these seven southern African countries. The team agreed on what the core curriculum should include and how it would fit well in the context where it would be presented. Prof Minette led an interesting discussion by first asking whether we think having a core curriculum is at all necessary and of any value. A quick gauge of members' experiences in developing or re-curriculating programmes revealed challenges such as long approval processes and workforce shortages. The second question for members before we split into four break-away groups was, "What tools or guidelines will be really helpful for us to develop or source?" Suggestions from the groups were the availability of documents and guidelines related to the programme's objectives and how the programme should be submitted in everyone's respective regions. In general, we have good programmes, but a core module might look different in other contexts because of differing disease profiles, health and service requirements, and scopes of practice. Everyone seemed to agree that through a community of practice such as the CNEF, we may assist one another in developing the best possible programmes for sustaining children's health and training in our respective contexts and broader Africa.   

We express our gratitude for everyone's contribution and attendance throughout the year and look forward to meeting again in 2024!