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Impact Data - The Better Parenting Project

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The Better Parenting Project was initiated by the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) with local partners in 6 countries within the Middle East Region in 1996. As developed in Jordan, the project sought to address the needs of parents of very young children for basic information and support in their tasks of childrearing, specifically in the areas of health, nutrition, and social-emotional development.

In early 1996 a UNICEF programme team adapted materials developed by UNICEF internationally focused on child development issues for parents of children from birth through age 6. With the help of Jordanian consultants, these materials were adapted culturally as necessary, translated into Arabic, and produced as 4 video presentations, 4 accompanying parent booklets, and 3 facilitator guides to the use of these materials.

A pilot programme began in June 1996 to test the effectiveness of these tools in engaging parents to reflect on, and strengthen or change their child-rearing practices. The pilot consisted of 3 stages of activities. In phase I, trainers were trained by a team of UNICEF consultants in the use of the new "Better Parenting" materials, and these trainers in turn trained facilitators who delivered the 8-session programme in 10 centres in the greater Amman area. These trainers and facilitators were generally drawn from the communities/districts in which they subsequently conducted the parenting education programmes. The second phase of this cascade model of delivery was conducted in 12 centres in greater Amman and districts in southern Jordan; phase III took all but one of 19 programme series to northern Jordan. This third phase also introduced various changes based on the experiences of the first 2 phases, such as the appointment of 4 liaison offers to supervise and monitor the training, and the awarding of certificates for mothers completing the full course.

In UNICEF Jordan's Master Plan of Operations for the 5-year cycle beginning in 1998, 4 areas of activities were specified to build on the work of the previous pilot phases of the project. Ten partners were designated, with one or two technical directors from within each organisation serving as steering committee representatives, and holding responsibilities for monitoring and periodic documentation of Better Parenting activities within their organisations.

Methodologies
In addition to a desk review of UNICEF documentation and relevant literature, interviews were conducted with 8 technical directors of partner organisations, 10 UNICEF staff members, 2 UNICEF Early Child Care (ECC) consultants, and 3 training team members. Discussion with mothers, young single women who had taken the Better Parenting Course revealed their shared perceived gains and reflections on experience. A training for health care workers and a facilitator training were observed as well as meetings of the National Team on ECCD Strategy and the Community Empowerment Team.
Knowledge Shifts
Post-test questionnaires following phase I of the pilot probed the extent to which these women's knowledge had increased, and whether behaviour in relation to their children had changed. In a summary report of the evaluation components, evaluator Dr. Nadia Srour states that, for the 112 mothers who attended every one of the 8 sessions (out of the 214 who attended some), "the findings demonstrated that the program had a statistically significant effect on creating differences in the performance of mothers, as measured against the pre- and post-participation evaluation tools. Improvement was observed in the level of the mothers' knowledge in the areas of child growth and development....The program also contributed towards improving the mothers' patterns of parenting. No differences were found in the performance of literate or illiterate mothers. The results also demonstrated that the program was both effective and suitable, that it led to raising the level of mothers' awareness in the area of early childhood upbringing, and that it could be implemented in Jordanian communities at the grass-roots level. The method of selecting the female trainers and the suitable centres for where the training is to be conducted, as well as the strategies for the training of trainers and program implementation, need to be taken into consideration."
Access
In all, the Pilot phases trained 44 facilitators, and 900 women attended the parenting series of sessions.

In Phase II of the pilot, the percentage of women who attended all workshops increased, as did the numbers of women who started late and did not fill out pre-test questionnaires, but who continued to attend for the balance of sessions.

As of August 2000, the Better Parenting project consisted of 11 Technical Directors from 9 organisations, 33 trainers, 86 liaison officers, and 305 facilitators, all of whom who had received training specific to their functions.

Over the period since Better Parenting was initiated in 1996, with some partners beginning their activities only in 1998, the overall project extended its reach via the agency of umbrella national organisations. The totals for 1999 show a total of over 6,000 participants, with over 8% of these being men.
Other Impacts
"The consultant [Jane Brown] unfortunately had only one opportunity to obtain direct feedback from parents; another opportunity was missed because of the delayed closure of a previous meeting. These women were far too few to be considered a significant 'sample', although the positive enthusiasm and specific contributions of the several women who attended this feedback session was encouraging. Of supporting interest were accounts of facilitators who spoke of parent enthusiasm, of changed parent behaviours, and the slow growth of interest and participation from men....Thus the consultant takes as a 'given' that the product being delivered to parents has been widely valued, and is in increasing demand. However, the kind of impact assessment that is now called for, it is suggested, is one which measures the ultimate objective of the programme — the impact on the outcomes for the children. This is a much more complicated type of impact to measure..."
Source
"Evaluation Report of the Better Parenting Project: National Multi-Sectoral Collaboration on Behalf of Young Children" [PDF], by Janet Brown, 2000; and UNICEF Evaluation Database.
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