A suite of interventions to families to develop positive parenting approaches and help end violence against children in low- and middle-income countries

Though the vast majority of families want the best for their children, across the world, levels of violence against children are high. Many families simply don’t have the strategies to cope with the stresses of poverty and family life, leading to violence and abuse of the most vulnerable within their unit. Parent and Caregiver Support is one of the seven different strategies to end violence against children within the INSPIRE Handbook and Technical Package, and is key to helping practitioners and policymakers make sound investments in violence prevention.

Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH), a collaboration with WHO, UNICEF, Clowns Without Borders South Africa, the Mikhulu Trust, and the Universities of Oxford, Cape Town, Stellenbosch, and Bangor (initially also with the University of Reading), are helping families to develop, test, evaluate, and widely disseminate positive parenting programmes to prevent violence against children and improve wellbeing for young people around the world.

The programmes were originally designed in South Africa in response to requests for non-commercial, open-access programmes suitable for low-income families. Results from several randomised controlled trials, in different parts of the world, indicate that this approach is highly effective. The suite includes four separate programmes that cover parenting at different developmental stages: infancy (conception to 6 months post-birth), toddlerhood (12 months to 60 months), early childhood (2-9 years; 1.5 to 5 years in Kenya) and adolescence (10-18 years). 

Photo: UNICEF/UNI159207/Schermbrucker