Global Parenting Initiative Update May/June 2022

May/June 2022

Global Parenting Initiative Update

June marks the half-way point of our first year of the GPI, and it has been such an exhilarating 6 months! Many of our projects have now started in earnest, and as a result our team is growing every day. While we will only be featuring new members of our core GPI Team in our digest, we want to extend a warm welcome to all the new members of our various research teams who have joined us over the past few months.

Some exciting things have happened in the last month - the GPI was featured on South African National news station eNCA, GPI Lead Prof Cathy Ward sat on a debate panel at the opening of the UN General Assembly, our first PLH Radio drama, Sinovuyo’s Story, was aired in South Africa, and our Ukraine Parenting Emergency Response has now reached 11.5 million people!

Read on for our research news and updates.

Africa

ParentApp for Teens in Tanzania

Reporting by Lauren Baerecke, Project Manager

Substantial strides have been made in preparation for data collection to begin as part of the ParentApp feasibility pilot in Tanzania. The Tanzanian version of ParentApp is being fine-tuned for the local context, incorporating feedback from trainers, facilitators, researchers and parents. A joint NIMR, UCT and Oxford team is leading the training of 16 new Tanzania-based Research Assistants in the lead up to fieldwork starting in late June. Community mapping of study sites is underway to identify vulnerable families. Once complete, the fieldwork teams will be conducting pre- and post-surveys and in-depth qualitative interviews with parents and their adolescent children recruited into the study.

The NIMR and Investing in Children and their Societies (ICS) teams have laid a strong foundation for the study in the Mwanza and Shinyanga regions, holding successful engagements with national, regional and local community stakeholders. The project has been very well received with significant in-country interest from government, USAID, WHO and UNICEF. We look forward to continued fruitful engagements with these policymakers on the scientific testing and national delivery of ParentApp in Tanzania.

In preparation for intervention delivery, CWBSA conducted a 3-day training with 15 facilitators and 3 management staff from ICS. Facilitators will recruit parents in study sites and provide support directly to these users through phone calls or WhatsApp groups. During the workshop, from 28 – 30 March 2022, facilitators underwent an intense training designed to equip them with an understanding of the key components of the programme, core facilitation skills, recruitment, onboarding and how to support users across their ParentApp journey. Having local trainers supporting onsite proved to be very useful and facilitators were actively engaged in all discussions and practices. Facilitators were encouraged to practise what they learnt in the training with their colleagues, family, and friends, and are receiving ongoing remote coaching support via WhatsApp groups from CWBSA. These WhatsApp group coaching sessions are modelled on the core strategies used in ParentChat and aim to teach trained facilitators how to receive and offer online support in large groups; skills which facilitators will use to provide support to participants in the ParentApp optimisation trial.

“From day 1 in this training, I have learnt a lot, not only on how to be a ParentApp facilitator but also to learn parenting skills. My training goal was met in this training, my goal was to learn and see how the app will support parent’s challenges on parenting.” said one ICS Facilitator.

The ParentApp Tanzania Team would also like to welcome some new team members: MacKenzie Martin, Research Assistant, Oxford; Gervas Mbosoli, Data Manager, NIMR; Onduru Gervas, Research Manager, NIMR; Samwel Mgunga, Fieldwork Manager, NIMR; and Gloria Maya, Fieldwork Manager, NIMR.

Malezi Bora na Maisha Mazuri: Good Parenting for a Good Life - Kenya

Reporting by Kathleen Murphy, Co-Investigator

We are very excited to have been awarded the John Fell Oxford University Press Research Fund (2022-23), worth £33,516.71, for our project entitled, “Enhancing father engagement in a parenting programme for street-connected families in Kenya”. Our Principal Investigator is Prof Frances, with co-investigators Kathleen Murphy, and Dr Jamie Lachman. We will be presenting on the Malezi Bora project at the Global Initiative to Support Parents (GISP) Africa Regional Conference on June 22nd 2022.

Asia

Parenting within the Preschool System in Malaysia

Reporting by Prof Rumaya Juhari, Principal Investigator

Prof Rumaya Juhari (Principal Investigator, University Putra Malaysia) has been invited to join two UNICEF officers and one officer from LPPKN to attend the Gender Responsive Parenting Training of Trainers in Budapest, Hungary, 20-26 June 2022.

MaPaText Launch - Philippines

Reporting by Jennel Reyes, Principal Investigator

MaPaText, a local adaptation of ParentText, an interactive text messaging system to promote the caregivers’ physical and mental health and child wellbeing, will be launched this June in the Philippines. Locally known as MaPaText (MaPa stands for Masayang Pamilya or Happy Family), will be pilot tested with 80 families in Valenzuela City, a city in Metro Manila. The program launch is set to coincide with the celebration of Parent Month and is done in cooperation with UNICEF Philippines, the local government of Valenzuela City, and the Department of Social Welfare and Development. More will be shared in the next issue!

South America and the Caribbeans

ParentText Launches in Jamaica

Reporting by Saara Thakur, GPI Scale-Up Lead

The ParentText Team is excited to announce our Launch in Jamaica. UNICEF Jamaica hosted a launch event on Friday, 17th June, which was attended by the Minister of Education and the EU ambassador, who also spoke during the event.

International Projects

PLH Social Enterprise

Reporting by Dr Jamie Lachman, GPI Lead

The PLH Social Enterprise, which falls under the Generate block of the GPI, will ultimately be responsible for supporting the scale-up of all PLH programmes. Work on this project has recently been set in motion with the submission of its 5-year proposal for funding from the LEGO Foundation. An application for registration with the UK Charities Commission as a charitable social enterprise has also been submitted. PLH Social Enterprise recently held its first trustee meeting with founding trustees Professor Lucie Cluver, Dr Bernadette Madrid, and Professor Mark Tomlinson. Additionally, The GPI has hired a new research assistant, Hanna Jovita, to help with the early stages of organisational development for PLH. Welcome Hanna!

ParentApp

Reporting by Lauren Baerecke, Project Manager

Roselinde Janowski, Doctoral Student and ParentApp Research Assistant, presented the implementation findings from the South African feasibility pilot of ParentApp at the Symposium for Early Researchers in Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, on 27th May 2022. Roselinde also presented at the ESRC Grand Union Doctoral Training Partnership (GUDTP) Annual Conference, June 7th 2022, on the design and methods of the large-scale hybrid optimisation trial of ParentApp planned to commence later this year with approximately 1000 families in Tanzania.

Ukraine Parenting Response

Reporting by Dr Isang Awah, Senior Advocacy Officer for the GPI

The ongoing war in Ukraine has had tremendous impact on children and families. Children, as well as their parents and caregivers, have experienced and witnessed violence, death, displacement, and separation, all of which are serious risks to their mental health and wellbeing. Additionally, with the number of people fleeing Ukraine now over 4.9 million, and millions more internally displaced, children are at a heightened risk of trafficking and exploitation.

To help parents and children cope during this crisis, we created open-source, evidence-based parenting resources in the form of simple, parenting tips. These resources were developed by the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) Team at the University of Oxford, in collaboration with the WHO, UNICEF, UNHCR, UNODC, University College London, the University of Cardiff, the Global Protection Cluster Child Protection Area of Responsibility, the International Rescue Committee, World Without Orphans, the Mental Health and Psychosocial Support Collaborative, the Early Childhood Development Action Network, the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children, Maestral, Changing the Way We Care, and Save the Children.

We started with 7 simple tips for parents to help their children feel safe and supported, and to help parents manage their own feelings during this tremendously stressful time. These tips, launched in early March 2022, were quickly disseminated through partner organisations. Several weeks later, we launched 7 additional tips which offer practical tools to parents for preventing child trafficking, preventing child sexual violence, and helping children when someone they love dies.

All the tips are currently available in 15 regional languages. The 14 tips, including faith-based resources, can be found on our website, in our Google Drive, and as videos on our YouTube channel. They can be downloaded and shared on social media and other digital platforms, or they can be printed. So far, these tips have been shared directly with about 300 organisations, including governmental and non-governmental organisations in Ukraine and bordering countries, UN agencies, academic institutions, and funding agencies, and these organisations have shared the tips with parents and caregivers. To date, we have reached over 11.5 million people with these parenting tips.

We send our most heartfelt condolences to all affected by this horrendous situation, and as a team, we are committed to supporting families in this crisis in whatever way we can

Society for Prevention Research Annual Conference

Reporting by Paula Zinser, Research Manager, University of Oxford

In late May, Dr Qing Han, Stephanie Eagling-Peche, and Paula Zinser attended the 30th annual Society for Prevention Research Conference in Seattle, Washington. This was a very exciting opportunity, as it was the first in-person conference that the PLH team has attended since the outbreak of COVID-19.

The overarching theme of the conference was realising the power of prevention through equitable dissemination and implementation science. Our symposium was surrounding the theme, implementation strategies to achieve equitable implementation of Evidence-Based Interventions. The symposium ‘Adapting Evidence-Based Parenting Interventions for Remote Delivery in the Global South during COVID-19' was chaired by Professor Eve Puffer, Duke University. In the symposium, we discussed how, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, PLH, a traditional parenting programme, has re-considered its implementation strategies and adapted to the restrictive nature of the pandemic, including consideration of digital and hybrid delivery modalities. In addition to overcoming barriers to accessibility during the pandemic, these adaptations have the potential to dramatically increase the scalability of parenting programmes thus achieving more equitable implementation of evidence-based interventions.

We discussed three PLH programmes that have been adapted for hybrid and digital delivery during COVID-19. During the first presentation, Stephanie Eagling-Peche described the implementation of an online-based delivery of PLH in Southeastern Europe as part of a 3-country randomised controlled trial in Moldova, North Macedonia, and Romania aimed at reducing child mental health problems and maltreatment. The results presented were the culmination of a five-year collaboration between researchers across Europe.

In the second presentation, Paula Zinser discussed the phases of research that we are planning on conducting with ParentText – a self-guided chatbot adaptation of the PLH programmes – in Jamaica, Malaysia, Philippines, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. She also presented findings from the first user-testing of ParentText in Malaysia.

In the last presentation, Dr. Qing Han presented quantitative findings from a 6-country study that examined the feasibility of ParentChat – an adaptation of PLH into facilitated online chat groups – aimed at promoting positive parent-child relationships and reducing violence against children in Malaysia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Philippines, and South Africa.

All three presentations and the discussions that followed offered a transnational perspective on the early-stage piloting and testing of evidence-based parenting programmes adapted for hybrid and digital delivery across a wide variety of cultural contexts. We shared insights about the methodological and implementation challenges and opportunities, including considerations of equity and access to technology-based interventions for previously disadvantaged populations in low-resource settings.

The conference provided an exciting opportunity to share the work that we have done in collaboration with many of our GPI partners. We look forward to continuing with our dissemination activities, notably with our colleagues presenting at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative later this year in Mexico.

Global Parenting Initiative Update May/June 2022