Evidence Generation
Asia
Evidence Generation
Asia
Globally, nearly 75 percent of young children aged 2 to 4 experience violence at home by a caregiver.1 This can have significant negative consequences on their development, including more risky behaviors when they’re older, higher school dropout rates, weaker socioemotional skills, and lower economic prospects in adulthood. As such, there is a significant policy need for interventions that can promote healthy, non-violent parenting practices. For instance, IPA evidence from Cote d’Ivoire found that caregivers who were exposed to positive parenting videos shared in communities reduced their violent discipline. With the third highest rate of caregiver violence against children in Latin America and the Caribbean,2 Jamaica provides an opportunity to assess the impact of positive parenting approaches.
The Irie Homes Toolbox (IHT) is a universally designed program implemented in Jamaica that promotes positive parenting behavior for caregivers of children aged 2 to 6. The program was delivered face-to-face and found to have reduced parental violence against children and increased their involvement in their children’s lives while also reducing child conduct issues.
To increase exposure to a wider population of caregivers, researchers adapted the Irie Homes Toolbox to virtual delivery via smartphone. For 10 weeks, the program teaches positive parenting practices through three different modalities: 1) weekly SMS messages with parenting tips, 2) a data-free app with videos and materials, and 3) weekly virtual group sessions led by Early Childhood Commission officers with session summaries sent via WhatsApp. Content focuses on building positive parent-child relationships, preventing and appropriately managing misbehavior, and supporting caregivers’ emotional self-regulation. With this innovation, however, a key question remains: can the virtual Irie Homes Toolbox deliver similarly strong impacts as the in-person version and offer potential as a scalable program?
Researchers partnered with the World Bank to conduct a randomized evaluation to measure whether the virtual Irie Homes Toolbox program improved caregivers’ attitudes and behaviors toward violence against children. They also assessed caregivers’ mental health and child conduct and emotional problems.
The intervention took place between August 2021 and September 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic and involved 1,113 caregivers of children aged 2-6 in 14 parishes across Jamaica. The caregivers were randomly assigned to either receive the virtual Irie Homes Toolbox program or serve as the comparison group and receive unrelated text messages about good COVID-19 prevention practices.
The virtual Irie Homes Toolbox program was an effective intervention to improve caregiving practices. Caregivers improved their attitudes toward physical and psychological violence against children and changed their disciplining behavior by reducing their violence against the target child right after the intervention ended. These results were sustained nine months later. This appears to be because the intervention provided caregivers with knowledge and skills and boosted their confidence in their own parenting skills in the short and medium term.
Beyond improved parenting practices, the intervention improved caregivers’ mental health in the medium term. Caregivers experienced reductions in stress, anxiety, and depression. At the same time, children scored lower on an index measuring emotional problems in the short term.
Results overall suggest that this virtual program can effectively strengthen caregiver-child relationships in contexts where violence against children is prevalent
Researchers found that the cost of the virtual Irie Homes Toolbox program was USD 62.4 per person to reduce violence against children by 0.12 standard deviations. This was similar to the in-person version, which cost USD 56 per person for the same violence reduction mark. However, as the virtual version is delivered via smartphone, it can extend the reach of the program.
1. UNICEF (2017). A familiar face: Violence in the lives of children and adolescents. New York, NY:
UNICEF.
2. UNICEF (2022). A statistical profile of violence against children in latin america and the caribbean.
Technical report, United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF).
3. Francis, Taja, and Helen Baker-Henningham. "The Irie Homes Toolbox: A cluster randomized controlled trial of an early childhood parenting program to prevent violence against children in Jamaica." Children and Youth Services Review 126 (2021): 106060.
