Caregiver well-being and mental health for sustained child development and learning in crisis-affected environments.

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Nurturing and responsive care for the child's body and mind is the key to supporting healthy brain development. Positive or negative experiences can shape a child's development and can have lifelong effects on him/her and the larger society. To nurture their child's body and mind, parents and caregivers need support and the right resources. Caregivers living through risks that are associated with poverty, and conflict and crisis face tremendous obstacles to healthy parenting and responsive care. Excessive stress, traumatic experiences, a sense of hopelessness, insecurity and depression can prevent caregivers from attending to and positively engaging with their children1. Thus, caregivers support is perhaps the most critical piece of ECD response in both development and humanitarian response contexts. When caregivers, family members and community systems are unable to provide young children with nurturing and supportive care, children can experience severe stress and psychosocial deprivation, which can have long-term effects on health, learning and behavior2. Ensuring that parents and caregivers, who are living in low resource and high adverse situations, have access to healthy foods, psychosocial support, and places to live and play that are healthy and safe for their children can help them provide more nurturing care.

Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and International Rescue Committee will share their significant experience leading programs that support caregivers’ well-being and mental health critical to children’s holistic development. The panel will offer evidence-based perspectives on how different resources and innovative approaches to caregivers’ support yield promising results for both the caregivers and children living under difficult and stressful circumstances. Some of the approaches to be shared include maternal mental health support group, spousal counseling combined with livelihoods, phone-based remote parenting counseling, and parenting programs even with low-dosage. Lessons learned with future recommendations to ensuring the continuity of quality nurturing care during pandemic and/or humanitarian contexts, and beyond.

Sub Unit

• Early Childhood Development SIG

Chair

• Pauline Silver Acayo, Catholic Relief Services

Individual Presentations

• Post-Pandemic Programmatic Adaptation towards improvement of Caregivers Mental Health and Family well-being for improved child development outcomes - Pauline Silver Acayo, Catholic Relief Services

• The Impact of a Mid-pandemic Phone-delivered Reach Up and Learn Early Stimulation Intervention targeting Syrian refugee caregivers in Jordan - Joyce Rafla, NYU Global TIES for Children