Achieving scale up and sustainability of Rwanda’s holistic parenting education programme

• In Event: Parent perceptions, involvement, and decision-making for ECD

Proposal

Achieving Scale up and Sustainability of Rwanda’s holistic parenting education programme
Save the Children’s First Steps project in Rwanda provides an approach to holistic parenting education for families of children aged 0-3 years.
Objectives
To provide overview of the scale up and sustainability planning process taken by the First Steps Project utilizing data collected over 18 and 36 months. Drawing on different approaches used for scale up and sustainability purpose, the paper will share lessons learned from comparative data from two different interventions to recommend scale up options for parenting education programmes in Rwanda and elsewhere.
Perspective(s) or theoretical framework
Globally an estimated 219 million children under the age of 5 are not meeting their developmental milestones, seriously reducing their ability to reach their full potential. Experiences within the first two years of life have long lasting impact of children’s cognitive, language, socio-emotional and physical development. Parents’ interactions with infants and children in the first years can have a long-term impact on physical health, on social and emotional well-being, and on cognitive capacities (CDC, 2007). With training, parents can become more effective providers of the care and stimulation that babies and young children need to develop properly (Evans, 2006). The presentation highlights the 3 different interventions used in the First Steps randomized control trial (RCT), which offered a holistic approach of parenting education that is integrated with Rwandan government structures, combines radio programming with community-based peer learning groups, and collaborates with local publishers and entrepreneurs to increase parents’ access to emergent literacy materials.

Research methods or modes of inquiry (including data sources, evidence, objects and/or materials)
This RCT randomly assigned sector to receive either the full package, light package or serve as control group. Both quantitative and qualitative methods have been used in complementarity to inform scale up. The qualitative information on scale such as recommended provision of parenting education, commissioning specific pieces of work to support policy and practice change hours for community volunteers, response of community to use of radio as a platform to deliver parenting education, number of training hours for parents, etc.
Data sources: The data was collected from 1610 families of children aged 6-24 months at baseline from 9 sectors of Ngororero district involved in the study between April 2015 and Sept 2016. A follow up study was conducted in 2018 to understand whether and how positive effects of First Steps persist over time.
Results and/or substantiated conclusions or warrants for arguments/point of view
First Steps project investigated the different conditions, inputs and activities required to allow the scale up of a parenting education programme nationally through existing structures and using volunteer systems. The conclusions from this study can inform governments and other stake holders interested in scaling up similar parenting education programmes. The results indicated that Children of parents that benefited from the intervention scored significantly higher on the child development index than children from the control group in the short-term, 12 months and follow-up study. Only children from one of the two tested arms (light and full intervention) retained significant gains over the control group in the medium-term, 33 months’ follow-up study. Both intervention models had a positive and significant effect on mother time investment in both the short- and medium-term, particularly on increasing time invested in engaging in caregiver-child ‘learning’ activities. And only fathers from the full intervention group were significantly more likely to engage in learning activities with their children at Endline and Follow-up such as singing, storytelling, playing, reading and naming objects.

Scholarly significance, originality and/or creativity of the study or work
There is limited research around parenting education in Rwanda and even less on scalability internationally. The work also includes detailed analysis on the programme exposure time that leads to impact, number of recommended training hours for volunteers which can inform implementers.

Authors

• Abimpaye Monique, Save the Children - Rwanda

• Lauren Pisani, Save the Children

• Caroline Dusabe, Save the Children

• Jean Providence Nzabonimpa, The African Capacity Building Foundation

• Richard Ashford, Whitman College