Lessons Learnt from Scaling-up a Parenting Programme during Its Research Phase

Jenny Doubt

Background: There is an increasing demand for effective ways of preventing and reducing violence in our societies. Children in developing countries experience higher levels of abuse, and less than 12% of abused children receive any services at all (Sumner et al., 2015). The seriousness of child maltreatment has thus attracted growing attention in the importance of taking preventative actions (WHO & ISPCAN, 2006). Strengthening parenting skills, family interactions and child behaviours is a child maltreatment prevention approach that is widely and has shown promise in preventing violence against children as well as improving child and parental outcomes. This paper focuses on one such programme, the Sinovuyo Teens Programme. Developed as part of the suite of prototype programmes by Parenting for Lifelong Health, Sinovuyo Teens is a low-cost, culturally adaptable, evidence-informed parenting programme designed specifically for the LMIC context.

Methodology: Developed and piloted in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, the Sinovuyo Teen programme is currently undergoing cluster randomised controlled trial testing. A qualitative evaluation has accompanied the RCT. This paper draws from the qualitative evaluation of the Sinovuyo Teen parenting programme in South Africa, including semi-structured interviews with policy makers, programme facilitators and programme beneficiaries alongside roundtable discussions and workshop observations.

Findings: Whilst immediate RCT post-test results are positive, plans for the programme’s scale-up in other provinces of South Africa – and indeed throughout sub-Saharan Africa – are progressing at pace. Policy planning is currently drawing on ongoing qualitative research in order to scale-up in South Africa as well as inform the programme’s dissemination outside of South Africa, in countries such as Egypt. Insights from this research indicate the value of embedding the programme in existing services and policies from the outset of the research process; moreover the impact of the research process on the experience of programme beneficiaries – most notably on attendance and expectation – bears careful consideration in negotiating the transition from research to scale-up phases. This paper will primary elucidate these key findings. However, the broader impact of a parent support programme on societal violence requires further research. This paper asks to what extent research needs to consider the context beyond policy in sustaining programme learnings and maintaining the wider impact of parenting programmes as part of the scale up strategy.

This abstract was submitted to the 2017 Society for Prevention Research Annual Meeting.