Five researchers from the Department of Social Policy and Intervention (DSPI) were part of the core team from Parenting for Lifelong Health that produced the World Health Organization’s new guide on parenting interventions for policymakers, practitioners and stakeholders. This step-by-step guide will help support child wellbeing and reduce violence against children.
Officially launched on 30 April 2025, the new guide, Designing, implementing, evaluating and scaling up parenting interventions: a handbook for decision-makers and implementers, was created by a team that included DSPI researchers Frances Gardner (Professor of Child and Family Psychology), Alexandra Blackwell (Postdoc Fellow at John Hopkins University and recent graduate from DPSI), Jamie Lachman (Professor of Child and Family Global Health), Saara Thakur (Global Scale-up Lead) and Zuyi Fang (Associate Member).
The handbook provides practical advice on the implementation, scale-up, and evaluation of evidence-based parenting interventions – that is, structured activities which help parents and carers improve parent-child interactions and the overall quality of parenting that a child receives.
Advice is split into three phases, with multiple steps to guide users through the process of creating an effective and sustainable parenting intervention:
- Phase 1: Groundwork for implementation – outlines the steps to be taken before implementing evidence-based parenting intervention.
- Phase 2: Intervention implementation – examines the practicalities of delivering evidence-based parenting implementations.
- Phase 3: Learning and sustaining – focuses on providing the tools for supporting users to assess when to scale up, adopt and sustain activities.
“This work highlights the amazing contribution of members of the Department on policymaking development and builds on our decades of research on parenting programmes in low and middle-income countries,” commented Professor Jamie Lachman. “By enabling policymakers to select and put into practice appropriate interventions, and by continuing to collaborate with key organisations, we are helping to support child wellbeing on a global scale.”
For an overview of the guide and to see real-world country experiences, watch the launch webinar on the Global Initiative to Support Parents website.
