- 72 health care workers will be trained in child stimulation.
- 320 mothers will be trained on early child stimulation and parenting skills.
It takes a village to raise a child.
-- African proverb
Organization:
Country of Implementation:
Nigeria
Rural/Urban:
Urban
Target Beneficiary:
0-2 years
Delivery Intermediaries:
Lady Healthcare Worker/Community Healthcare Worker; Caregiver; Medical Professional
Objective:
Improve mother’s knowledge on child development and negotiation skills with family members.
Innovation Description:
Integration of videos and active skill building into post natal/child welfare clinics to improve parenting knowledge and practices.
Stage of Innovation:
Proof of Concept
Organization
Rural/Urban
Urban
Target Beneficiary
0-2 years
Delivery Intermediaries
Lady Healthcare Worker/Community Healthcare Worker; Caregiver; Medical Professional
Objective
Improve mother’s knowledge on child development and negotiation skills with family members.
Innovation Description
Integration of videos and active skill building into post natal/child welfare clinics to improve parenting knowledge and practices.
Stage of Innovation
Proof of Concept
Evidence shows that genes and early life experiences drive the development of brain architecture and intellectual function. [1] Poor stimulation and poor social interaction can affect brain structure and function, and have lasting cognitive and emotional effects. [2]
Social interactions in the form of “serve and return” exchanges between child and parent serve as building blocks for psychosocial, physical and cognitive development. Parents in sub-Saharan countries are ill-equipped to maximize the benefits from this interaction. Our approach builds on the traditional concept of “it takes a village to raise a child” – in other words, not only the parents but other extended family members play a role as caregivers to young children. Our intention is to use the existing post-natal/child welfare clinics to deliver an intervention that uses culturally acceptable videos and active skill building, to deliver health messages and practical skills to women, their partners and other caregivers on early child development. It is expected that the mothers will in turn train their male partners and other caregivers on these skills, within the context of the home setting. To better prepare them for this home engagement process with their male partners and other caregivers, the training material for mothers will include skill-building such as communication and negotiation.
It takes a village to raise a child.
-- African proverb
The literature on early child development shows that biology and experience interact to shape development. [3] In order to apply this body of research to the African cultural context, the goal of this project is to develop, test and deploy an intervention package, using videos and active skill building, to deliver health messages and practical skills to women.
The intervention will include three unique innovations.
The main focus of the contact sessions with mothers will be to provide information on child care and teach methods of child stimulation and play that can improve early brain development and cognitive development. The project team will also highlight risks to child development such as exposure to violence and malnutrition, and advise on ways to track child developmental delays. This information will be incorporated into videos.
Women will be recruited from primary health care centres in Ibadan during the post-delivery period. At the first post-natal visit (6 weeks), mothers are exposed to informative videos and practical skill building sessions, and are followed up for 6 additional visits (at 10, 14wks and at 6, 9, 12, 18 months). Four of the total number of visits will coincide with routine postnatal and well-baby clinic visits.
This project embodies the principles of integrated innovation by adapting what we know from the scientific literature about early child development to the African context; by engaging the child’s first social contacts (parents and other caregivers) in active skill building that can help to shape the child’s future cognitive development; and by producing videos which focus on specific behavioral and social environmental changes which can then be copyrighted and made available to other health facilities in Nigeria and elsewhere.
Funders
Key Partners
“It takes a village to raise a child” is a concept that Nigerians can easily identify with. We plan to start this innovative approach to maximizing the cognitive potential of children by testing our hypotheses in Ibadan, and then bringing it to scale in the southwestern part of Nigeria. Because many sub Saharan countries have sociocultural contexts similar, there is potential to scale-up across and beyond Nigeria as well.
This intervention will be a randomized control trial, with study arms being the intervention and the control (i.e. normal care) groups.
Child outcomes
The effectiveness of the intervention will be evaluated by quantifying the effects on early brain development of children less than two years, i.e. comparing the socio-cognitive and physical development of children in the intervention compared to control group.
Caregiving behaviour
The mothers’ knowledge and competence to effectively engage their male partners and other caregivers on child development is expected to increase after the training. The change in perception and behavior of parents and caregivers on child development and rearing will be measured through self-reported child care behavior assessments, responses to case vignettes, and supplemented by objective home observation of child care practices. The beneficiary capacity and competence of health workers to successfully deliver this intervention after being trained will also be assessed.
Survey of Wellbeing of Young Children (SWYC). Socioemotional, developmental, parent/family context.
Self-Perceptions of the Parental Role scale (SPPR). MacPhee, Benson & Bullock, 1986
Fathers involvement. Cowan et al. [4]