Save the Children have produced a new study, and this time the study looked at the impact of ICDP on children. Many thanks to Disa Sjoblom who has been the driving force behind this work and also the whole team in Save the Children Nepal that has been rolling out the ICDP programme as part of their parenting package. Their excellent work is reflected in the evaluation results:
The highlights are:
- Parents/ caregiver became more engaged with their children
- Maltreatment by caregivers reduced
- Children’s development across all early childhood domains improved, i.e. social, emotional, cognitive, language and motor development (age of children 0-5)
- There were improvements in nutrition practices but the time was probably too short to have significant impact on nutritional outcomes
- Children from smaller families and boys had higher development gains (which means that we must pay more attention to gender inequalities in parenting and ensure that parents engage with all children)
- Children who had more frequent exposure to psychological aggression and neglect by parents/ caregivers had smaller development gains