Pathways to Scale for Implementing Parenting Programs Globally

• In Event: Global Parenting Interventions: Advances in Measurement and Scale Up

Abstract

Study Objective: To generate insights into the implementation and scaling of the playful parenting interventions, drawing on the diverse experiences of several parenting programs.

Calls for scaling up successfully tested parenting interventions have multiplied over the past several years. Many acknowledge that experimental parenting interventions are of limited value unless they have larger policy and programmatic impact. 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 has been 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 to contextualize Nurturing Care Framework (NCF) strategies. This presentation delves deeper into the research design and initial findings around scale up under the Playful Parenting Initiative, tying it to the larger global focus on the NCF.

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 that is taken to scale, and is different in each country within the Playful Parenting Initiative. The ExpandNet 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 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.

The study places the emphasis on the implementation processes that facilitate and hinder scale up, and how they are measured. This flash talk will provide a conceptual underpinning for the series by unpacking scale up attributes for global parenting programs and underscoring the linkages of scale up evidence to the broader joint mission of realizing the NCF.

Group Authors

As per Anne Perdue please consider these flash talks as one session. They should either be accepted or rejected as a whole.

Flash talks should be ordered as follows: 1707093, 1705221, 1705962, 1707008, 1705220, 1705994, 1706107, 1706048"

Authors

• Carina Omoeva, FHI 360
  Presenting Author

• Kerrie Proulx
  Non-Presenting Author