PLH team respond to Pakistan floods with new parenting tips

A woman wearing traditional dress sitting on wall and looking at Hunza valley in autumn season, Gilgit Baltistan in Pakistan, Asia

DSPI’s Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) team have developed evidence-based parenting tips to support families impacted by the floods in Pakistan.

The devastating floods have led to the loss of over 1700 lives and exposed about 7.6 million children to several risks. In collaboration with the National Institute of Psychology at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan, the WHO, UNICEF, the Early Childhood Development Action Network, the Global Initiative to Support Parents, International Rescue Committee, and other international agencies, the PLH team have developed practical ways that parents can help themselves and their children cope with the crisis.

The parenting tips are available on the Pakistan Parenting website in English, Urdu, Sindhi, Pushto, Saraiki, Punjabi, Hindko and Balochi. They can be downloaded in PDF format and are open-source to allow sharing. The parenting tips have already been shared directly with many organisations including UN Agencies, non-governmental organisations, and local organisations in Pakistan. The team are currently creating additional parenting resources including TikTok videos with parenting tips in Urdu and other languages.

Dr Sobia Masood, from the National Institute of Psychology at Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan, said, ‘The recent floods have badly affected the psychological health of parents and children, alike. With the help of researchers from the University of Oxford and volunteers from Pakistan, we rapidly adapted the Ukraine Parenting resources and created new parenting tips to increase parents' coping efficacy. These tips have been translated into seven local languages for maximum outreach, and will help parents and caregivers to cope with stress, support children and build children’s resilience to crisis.’

DSPI’s Professor Lucie Cluver said, ‘Please share these resources with any organisations or families who would find the tips helpful. Parents in crisis situations deserve the best evidence-based support.’

This project follows on from the team’s Ukraine Parenting Response, which reached more than 11.5 million people, and an award-winning COVID-19 Playful Parenting resources which have now reached over 210 million people. Developed through a collaboration between WHO, UNICEF as well as various universities and non-profit partners, Parenting for Lifelong Health is a suite of open access, non-commercialised parenting programmes to prevent violence in low-resource settings.

Accessing the Pakistan Parenting Resources:

All of the tips are open source, and can be downloaded in PDF format, to allow sharing and editing.