Parenting within the Social Welfare System in the Philippines

The Parenting within the Social Welfare System project has two primary aims:

  • To examine and support the scale-up of PLH programming within the Philippines governmental conditional cash transfer (CCT) system
  • To explore additional pathways for the testing and scaling of evidence-based parenting programmes in the Philippines.

For the PLH Philippines team (Based at Ateneo de Manila University, University of the Philippines and the Masayang Pamilya Organisation Inc), 2024 was the final year of participation within the core GPI programme.

During the reporting period, the team strengthened partnerships with the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) and UNICEF Philippines to support the implementation and monitoring of the MaPa programme.

Key achievements included the completion of data collection and preliminary analysis for the RCT of the in-person MaPa Teens 2.0 programme in collaboration with Joy Nostalg Foundation (JNF); the publication of two articles in international journals; the formal launch of the Masayang Pamilya (MaPa) Organisation Inc; and the enhanced visibility of the programme through active engagement in national and global networks.

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To support national and global initiatives to address violence against children (VAC), the multisectoral collaboration PLH-Philippines has been developing and testing, via a series of systematic steps, a locally adapted parent support intervention called Masayang Pamilya (MaPa, or Happy Family). An initial pilot randomised control trial tested with families within the national Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) system showed significant and sustained reduced risk for child maltreatment when compared to the control group who underwent the usual Family Development Sessions (FDS).

In response to the crisis wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020-2021 PLH-Philippines adapted the delivery of MaPa core parenting themes and skills to online/digital modalities as part of the COVID-19 Playful Parenting Emergency Response. The MaPa Parenting Tipsheets were translated to 12 major Philippine languages and disseminated on a wide scale, reaching an estimate of 300,000 service providers and family caregivers.

MaPa webinars and radio segments conducted with partner stakeholders reached over 25,000 participants and viewers. These MaPa core messages are now being integrated in the national CCT programme via the online Family Development Sessions (eFDS) system, to be disseminated to a potential 4 million Filipino beneficiary households.

There are four main objectives of the study:

  1. To monitor the delivery of the digital-hybrid MaPa programme in the government’s social cash transfer (CCT) programme across different regions in the Philippines, specifically in terms of reach, delivery format or modality, and implementation of key components (i.e.discussion of core principles, support for skills practice)

  2. To evaluate the feasibility, accessibility, relevance, and usefulness of the digital-hybrid MaPa programme and delivery channels from the perspective of the community service providers and the CCT beneficiary caregivers

  3. To evaluate the effects of the digital-hybrid MaPa modules on discipline practices, positive parenting, parenting stress, parental wellbeing, and attitude toward corporal punishment of a selected sample of caregivers (exposed to the digital-hybrid MaPa programme) and community service providers (trained in MaPa core principles)

  4. To document the process and identify good practices, facilitators, and barriers in stakeholder collaboration, dissemination, and scale-up of the MaPa program

The whole of the Philippines.

This study is the first of its kind to be tested in the Philippines. It will contribute to an understanding of how an evidence-based parenting intervention programme to prevent violence against children can be embedded in a national CCT system and disseminated in large scale in a LMIC context.

The trial was registered on the Open Science Framework (OSF).

Evaluation of a brief online training for community service providers in the Philippines

Dominiq Ruth G. Reyes, Rosanne M. Jocson, Liane Peña Alampay, Bernice Landoy Mamauag, Jennel C. Reyes, Jamie M. Lachman | 2024 | Children and Youth Services Review

Feasibility of a digital parent support group chat intervention to prevent child and adolescent maltreatment in the Philippines: A pilot mixed methods study

Rosanne M. Jocson, Liane Peña Alampay, Jamie M. Lachman, Jennel C. Reyes, Bernice Landoy Mamauag, Denise Hazelyn A. Maramba, Stephanie Eagling-Peche, Qing Han, Francisco Calderon | 2024 | International Journal of Psychology

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