The Global Parenting Initiative: Innovating delivery of parenting and psychosocial support to families living on the Thailand-Myanmar border

Families displaced by armed conflict, poverty, and insecurity face multiple challenges to accessing parenting and psychosocial support despite evidence of the intergenerational impacts of trauma and adversity on child well-being. The Global Parenting Initiative is a consortium of academic researchers and implementing agencies working to develop and test innovative strategies for scaling up parenting and psychosocial support to families living in adversity in the Global South. As part of this initiative, researchers from McMaster University, IPSR, and Duke University together with partner organizations on the Thailand-Myanmar border are designing, implementing, and evaluating interventions to promote positive parenting, reduce child maltreatment, and improve psychosocial wellbeing among displaced families from Myanmar. This seminar reviewed the literature on parenting and barriers to accessing parenting and psychosocial support in forced displacement settings, as well as presented the design of the project on the Thailand-Myanmar border.