Scaling Up Playful Parenting: Generating evidence on implementation at scale Presenters

• In Event: Measuring Learning through Play in low- and middle-income countries: Innovations across contexts

Proposal

The global focus on bringing successfully tested parenting interventions to scale has magnified over recent years. While there is increasing recognition that proven parenting interventions cannot simply be handed over to the host governments, there is little knowledge on what actually makes successful scale up happen. The new LEGO Foundation Playful Parenting Initiative, launched in 2020, supports five scaling up programs in five countries, and includes an implementation science research component that seeks to distil common lessons and evidence on pathways to successful scale up from across these five different contexts. 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 the five different country contexts, and across diverse implementing teams.

This presentation will provide an overview of the research design, discuss the similarities and differences between the partners and contexts, and share some baseline data as the research project nears the completion of its first year. The presentation will also discuss the implications of COVID-19 on the research activity implementation. The following research constructs will be examined in the study:

1. Child and caregiver outcomes. The study examines the effects of playful parenting on child developmental outcomes and caregiver-child interaction. The research hypothesis examines the impact of interventions on outcomes at pilot stage, and seeks to establish whether these effects diminish as programs go to horizontal scale, expanding to new sites.

2. Community norms around parenting. Changing the gender norms around parenting and increasing father engagement in playful parenting is another research construct of interest to the study. A baseline survey of caregivers and qualitative data from community-level focus groups will provide insight on this construct.

3. Frontline provider knowledge and competencies. The study tracks the development of capacity for supporting playful parenting among the frontline providers engaged by the LEGO Playful parenting partners. The frontline workforce composition differs across the five contexts, ranging from professional healthcare personnel to community-level volunteer mothers. The study will measure the knowledge of ECD and parenting best practices following frontline worker training, and trace the implementation of caregiver services through targeted observation of parenting sessions.

4. Government engagement and ownership. The study examines the level of stakeholder buy-in for the playful parenting intervention offered by the programs, and their commitment for long-term institutionalization and sustainability for the scaled-up interventions. A series of key informant interviews in Year 1 will provide an initial gauge for the five programs before the scale up efforts are underway in each country.

With the COVID-19 pandemic affecting caregiver support services around the world and particularly in the LEGO Playful Parenting target countries, service provision and implementation research activities have been equally affected. The presentation will discuss the modifications resulting from the new sanitary protocols in place, and their implications for the ongoing research.

Authors

• Carina Omoeva, FHI 360

• Frances Aboud, McGill University