Pathways to Scale for Global Playful Parenting Innovations

• In Event: Pathways to Scale for Playful Parenting Programs

Proposal

The global focus on bringing successfully tested parenting interventions to scale has magnified over recent years. There is increasing recognition that proven parenting interventions cannot simply be handed over to the user organization (i.e. government) with the expectation that they will automatically become part of routine Early Childhood Development (ECD) programming and policy. While there has been progress, there is still little practical guidance on how to proceed with scaling up parenting interventions. Developing this guidance represents a leading priority on the global ECD agenda, with the World Health Organization (WHO) launching a partnership including UNICEF, the World Bank group and UNESCO, to support evidence-based decision-making for contextualizing Nurturing Care Framework (NCF) strategies.
This presentation delves deeper into the Playful Parenting implementation research design and initial findings around scale up. As the research partner on the Playful Parenting initiative, FHI 360 leads a unique opportunity to examine different scale up strategies of playful parenting in five different country contexts, across four diverse implementing teams.
The study is grounded in the ExpandNet (WHO 2010) framework for understanding and assessing successful scale up, developed specifically for complex, multi-stakeholder processes that seek to take an effective innovation to the level of the national system. The innovation in this framework is the intervention or set of interventions that are taken to scale. This framework distinguishes the resource team, which is the program team delivering the innovation, and the user organization, or the government agency(-ies) adopting the innovation at scale. Both the resource team and the user organization are the subject of this implementation research study, which captures evidence on the attributes possessed by each that lend themselves to scale. On the resource team side, the study examines the capacity of the team, its credibility with the user organization, and ability and resources to effectively deliver training at large scale through carefully designed intake interviews with implementing partners. Results from these interviews provide preliminary evidence on critical scale up attributes as it relates to the innovation and resource team across diverse country contexts. On the user organization side, important aspects and attributes will include existing capacity to carry out the intervention, perceived need for the intervention at scale, effective leadership and internal advocacy.
Further, under the ExpandNet framework, a successful innovation is one that has evidence of impact on children, families and households, and communities and workforce provider. Even so, the innovation cannot be assumed to be immediately scalable but requires a deliberate scale up strategy that necessarily considers all aspects of the scaling process. The scale up strategy must include the following considerations: Program organizational processes; Cost and resource allocation; Monitoring and evaluation; and Dissemination and advocacy.
The presentation will provide a broad overview of the research design as shaped by the ExpandNet framework and present initial findings as they relate to scale up. Specifically, the research team will touch on whether program innovations and how parenting interventions incorporate scale up attributes into their program design.

Authors

• Carina Omoeva, FHI 360

• Frances Aboud, McGill University

• Kerri Proulx, Consultant