Our Story
Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) is a UK-based charitable social enterprise committed to developing evidence-based, open-source playful parenting solutions and bringing the capacity to operationalise a global scale-up of services for the most vulnerable. PLH was founded as an initiative in 2012 with UNICEF and the WHO to develop, test, and share a suite of freely-available, non-commercialised, and low-cost parenting programmes to reduce violence against children and improve child wellbeing in low- and middle-income countries. These programmes have been rigorously tested and implemented in 35 low- and middle-income countries for approximately 300,000 beneficiaries. Responding to the impact of COVID-19, the PLH resources were adapted in collaboration into open-source resources to promote playful, nurturing caregiving and to prevent violence against children.12 These materials reached an estimated 210.5 million parents in 192 countries and territories by December 2021. PLH became a UK-registered charity in 2022 to respond to the growing need for scalable and sustainable parenting support to address multiple child and family adversities. Key organisational considerations include further developing its digital/hybrid product offerings, strengthening its existing relationships with core partners, including UNICEF, USAID, and WHO, and maintaining its commitment to open source, evidence-based, affordable parenting support as the organisation grows.
Our Mission
Parenting for Lifelong Health aims to contribute to a global movement to accelerate the embedded scale-up of evidence-based playful parenting support in the Global South. Our shared goal is that every parent, everywhere has the capacity to improve child development and learning outcomes and reduce family violence.
Our Approach
Linked to this aim are five core objectives:
- Organisational Development: Create an agile and inclusive organisational infrastructure with a strong presence in the Global South that has the capacity and expertise to build on its success of the past 10 years scaling playful parenting solutions in the Global South
- Accelerating Impact: Expand the reach and impact of playful parenting solutions within government, NGO, and private sector systems in the Global South by building local infrastructure, training frontline service providers, and providing technological assistance to enable scale-up and institutionalisation
- Ecosystem-Building: Facilitate collaboration among international, regional, national, and local stakeholders, including building the capacity and sustainability of systems-building partners and implementing agencies
- Humanitarian Parenting Support: Build a first responder delivery model to provide playful parenting and child protection support during humanitarian emergencies and crisis situations
- Sustainability and Growth: Increase organisational sustainability and resilience by diversifying revenue streams across philanthropic donations, institutional partnerships, and earned income models.
