Parenting for Lifelong Health
A suite of parenting programmes to prevent violence
Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) is a suite of open access, non-commercialised parenting programmes to prevent violence in low-resource settings. These programmes have been developed and rigorously tested through a collaboration between WHO, Stellenbosch University and the University of Cape Town in South Africa, the universities of Oxford, Bangor and Reading in the United Kingdom, and UNICEF. Training in the PLH programmes is led by various non-governmental organisations, including Clowns Without Borders South Africa (South Africa), the Prevention Research for Community, Family and Child Health at Stellenbosch University (South Africa) and the Children’s Early Intervention Trust (Wales). After showing positive results in the evaluations, the programmes are currently being scaled up in over 20 low- and middle-income countries across Sub-Saharan Africa, South-eastern Europe, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. Additionally, several studies of the programmes are currently underway to further develop the evidence base for these interventions.
Aim
The aim of PLH is to develop, test and widely disseminate, through the provision of specific training, a suite of parenting programmes for low-resource settings that is affordable, not for profit, open access, and based on rigorous evidence.
This suite of programmes has a key goal of preventing child maltreatment and involvement in other forms of violence. It also shows benefits in improving parent-child relationships, enhancing security of child attachment, and of child cognitive and socio-emotional development, reducing family mental health distress, increasing family economic resilience, and reducing substance use.
Evidence shows that preventing child maltreatment and later violence can also result in important long-term physical and mental health and socio-occupational benefits as children become adults and parents themselves.
Rationale
Recent knowledge about the prevalence of child maltreatment and other childhood adversities, and about the links between childhood adversities, poor parenting, and their serious and life-long consequences, has resulted in multiple calls for innovative and concerted strategies to reduce them.
In high-income countries, parenting programmes are a strategy that has been shown to have major and long-lasting benefits in preventing child maltreatment and reducing violence both to and by young people. These programmes typically aim to strengthen caregiver-child relationships through play and praise, and to help parents to manage children’s behaviour through effective, age-appropriate, positive discipline strategies.
These programmes are very often too expensive for low- and middle-income countries and not always culturally appropriate. Hence, there are currently no widely available parenting support programmes that are evidence-based, culturally appropriate, and affordable for low-resource settings, where the need is the greatest.
Approach
The development of the PLH programme will follow well-established procedures for developing prevention programmes.
Initial programme development took place in South Africa, and programmes have been adapted for South-East Asia, Eastern Europe and are starting to be adapted for Latin America. Randomised trials have been completed in South Africa and the Philippines, and trials are underway in England, Brazil, Macedonia, Moldova, Lesotho, Romania, Thailand, and Uganda. As the programmes spread throughout low- and middle-income countries, all implementers are asked to use simple evaluation measures and to share the findings with the programme development team. This will help us to further improve the programmes over time (please contact parentinglh@gmail.com for more information).
The programmes are underpinned by a shared approach and a set of common principles, explained in manuals written in language accessible to non-specialists. These manuals are all open access for non-profit use. The manuals, while accessible, should be accompanied by training via the PLH implementing partners.
This project is based on universal core principles found in evidence-based parenting programmes from around the world and will draw on the experience of developing such programmes in different cultural groups, and in other low- and middle-income countries.