Advocate Updates September - November 2022
Reporting by Dr Isang Awah
It has been a very busy few months for the Advocate team, with some great achievements all around! Highlights include our Covid19 Parenting Response winning an award at the University of Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation and Engagement Awards 2022, our members presenting at a number of conferences and meetings worldwide, and the development of the Pakistan Parenting resources to support families impacted by the floods in Pakistan. Read on for more!
September 2022
Dr Godfrey Siu at the SVRI Forum 2022
We are thrilled to have received the Covid Response Winner award for our COVID-19 Parenting Emergency Response at the University of Oxford’s Vice-Chancellor’s Innovation and Engagement Awards 2022 on September 6, as well as participating in the VC Awards exhibition which was held on September 13.
A number of our members attended and presented at various international conferences and meetings in September, including the SVRI Forum 2022 (19-23 September, Mexico) and the Ukraine Parenting Response at the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR) Conference (28 - 30 September, Estonia), where Dr Isang Awah and Dr Yulia Shenderovich presented.
October 2022
Saara Thakur
In collaboration with the National Institute of Psychology at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan, the WHO, UNICEF, the Early Childhood Development Action Network, the Global Initiative to Support Parents, International Rescue Committee, and other international agencies, we have developed evidence-based parenting tips to support families impacted by the floods in Pakistan. The Pakistan Parenting resources are available in English, Urdu and six additional Pakistani languages and have been shared directly with many organisations including UN Agencies, non-governmental organisations, and local organisations in Pakistan. You can read the press release about these resources here.
A number of our members attended and presented at various international conferences and meetings in October. Well done to GPI members Maira R. Alvarez L. B., who presented at the Global Initiative to Support Parents’ (GISP) Latin America Regional Meeting (5-7 October); Saara Saara Thakur and Dr Amalee McCoy, who presented at the GISP regional consultation on parent and caregiver support for Southeast Asia (12-13 October, New Delhi); and Prof Lucie Cluver, who presented on Parenting in Crisis to Humanitarian colleagues at the WHO on October 22.
Under the Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP), we also organised a workshop on parenting in Tanzania. The workshop which was held virtually on October 17, 2022, had participants that included practitioners and policymakers in Tanzania, technical representatives from UNICEF, the WHO, ECDAN, and The Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children.
November/December 2022
The end of the year has been very busy for the Advocate team, with members presenting at a number of meetings, and our very successful GPI Online Launch being well attended on 6 December. GPI Leads Prof Lucie Cluver presented on parenting support and on the Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP) at a USAID parenting workshop on 7 November, while Dr Jamie Lachman gave a keynote on scaling evidence based playful parenting programmes at the Home Start Worldwide conference which was held in Malta from 7-9 November. Both gave presentations at The Human Safety Net Networks 2022 held in Venice on 16-18 November. Lastly, Dr Susan Hillis made a presentation to high-level policy-makers in Zambia on December 1. Prof Lucie Cluver and Dr Isang Awah also participated in the meeting.
The Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP), which include Parenting for Lifelong Health/GPI organised a session on parenting support as part of the main agenda of the WC ECCE, a UNESCO-organised conference featuring Ministries of Education from around the world. Our session took place on November 14 and featured Ben Perks from UNICEF as a keynote speaker with panel discussions from Tanzania, North Macedonia, Indonesia, the LEGO Foundation, and Porticus. Furthermore, the GISP Asia Webinar series on Supporting Parents and Caregivers, in which we featured, was held on November 24 and December 6.
Ukraine Parenting
Our Ukraine Parenting resources for parents in conflict continue to be distributed by our interagency partners, and have been translated into Kiswahili and shared with Learn to Play, an organisation in Botswana, to share with families that they work with in refugee camps in Botswana.
The Ukraine Parenting team has revised and resubmitted the ethical approval application for the evaluation of the Ukraine Parenting resources study. In addition to addressing the reviewers’ comments, the application was amended to make it ideal for a more generalised study that is open-ended and covers an evaluation of the Pakistan Parenting resources. Additionally, personalised Certificates of Appreciation have been offered to organisations that partnered with them in the dissemination of the parenting resources. They have also informed the partner organisations of the planned evaluation, and sought their participation in the study. Many organisations have indicated willingness to participate in the study which will begin as soon as ethical approval is given.
Advocate Lead Prof Lucie Cluver also presented a lecture on “Basic training on responding to sexual violence disclosures” at the ‘Train the trainers’ webinar for psychologists at the Ukrainian Institute of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy on 18 November.
Pakistan Parenting
Our Pakistan Parenting Response team have been working hard to get our tips for parents affected by the devastating floods. Additional resources have been launched, including TikTok videos and radio scripts. These resources have been shared with partner organisations for dissemination. Dr. Sobia Masood, a member of the Pakistan Parenting Response team, shared these parenting tips on the Pakistan national radio. The team has also begun training for staff of partner organisations. The first training was successfully held on December 2.
