Ugandan Parenting for Respectability Dissemination Event Goes Big

GPI’s Parenting for Respectability (PfR) Uganda team held a highly successful dissemination event in Wakiso,Uganda on 12 January 2023. The event aimed to disseminate results and recommendations from the Parenting for Respectability Implementation Science Evaluation RCT cluster trial to various stakeholders, including national government, faith-based and community leaders, and facilitators.

Presided over by the Chairperson of the Gender and Social Services Committee of the Uganda Parliament, the high-profile event was well attended, and received wide media coverage, including in two national newspapers, four television stations and two local radio stations. Speakers at the event included GPI Leads Dr Godfrey Siu and Dr Jamie Lachman, as well as PfR team member Carolyn Namutebi, as well as programme facilitators and various community leaders. Key outcomes of the event included commitments from government and community leaders to support the scaling-up of PfR to help fight the scourge of poor parenting and violence affecting the country.

The Parenting for Respectability programme (PfR) was developed in Uganda by Makerere University Child Health and Development Centre, in collaboration with Universities of Glasgow and Oxford, and implemented in Uganda between 2021 and 2022 to address these issues of violence against children and gender-based violence at family and community levels.

The programme was tested in a Randomised Control Trial (RCT) in Northern and Central Uganda, with preliminary results positive across almost all outcomes. The programme led to an overall reduction in child maltreatment, as well as increased support of education and child educational aspirations, increased investment in basic child necessities, reduced household food insecurity and reduced parenting stress and parent depression.

The team further recommended that now is an ideal time to scale up the PfR programme, given increasing policy interest to optimise the role of parenting and strengthen the family institution and government’s emphasis on evidence-based programmes. 

Scale-up and alternative delivery mechanisms, including multimedia, digital, and remote modalities combined with in-person support for the PfR programme is currently being explored in the GPI’s Parenting for Respectability Digital in Uganda study.

Makerere University Child Health and Development Centre, in collaboration with University of Oxford under the Global Parenting Initiative Projects, PLH and other local implementing partners, are committed to ensuring meaningful capacity strengthening and systems development during adaptation and scaling efforts. The study was funded by Oak Foundation, The LEGO Foundation, the Evaluation Fund, the Sexual Violence Research Initiative and the University of Glasgow. The results of this study will feed into the ongoing standardisation of parenting work in Uganda through the National Parenting Agenda Consortium Initiative led by Makerere in collaboration with the Gender Ministry.

Read the Uganda team’s one-page summary here.

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