The International Child Development Programme (ICDP) has been operating for some years now as part as part of the Child Sensitive Social Protection project run by Save the Children Philippines.
Aside from the CSSP project-funded implementing partner, MoLAHUTAY, Inc., there were other partners who were trained in the ICDP parenting programme, such as NACPHIL (National Auxilliary and Chaplaincy of the Philippines), Ormoc City Social Welfare Office, Child Development Workers of Mondragon, Northern Samar and Municipal/City Links and Social Welfare Officers of Region 8 – all have contributed to the significant increase of the CSSP project reach in 2022. A total of 44,255 children and adults were reached directly and indirectly across the region.
228 (F-187; M – 41) individuals in Region 8 were trained as ICDP facilitators
11,502 parents/caregivers (F – 9,276; M – 2,226) across Region 8 have completed the parenting programme
1,494 men/father caregivers were covered by the parenting programme
101 family support groups (FSG) formed during the previous project have been conducting monthly parenting refresher sessions. 32 new FSGs formed by City/Municipal Links (C/M/L) of Leyte have also been meeting regularly.
ICDP expansion to the Samar province:
The ICDP parenting programme is still the flagship intervention of the new CSSP project in Samar which is called, “Advancing Child Sensitive Social Protection in the Philippines”. The new project is an expanded version of the previous CSSP project in Leyte province, which covered the municipalities of Villaba, Matag-ob, Kananga and Ormoc City. The municipalities of Jiabong and Calbiga in the Samar Province will be added to the project areas. The CSSP Project approaches that include the Barangay Social Protection and Related Initiatives Link (BSPRIL), ICDP parenting programme, Community Clusters for Children (3Cs) and the Youth Resilience Programme (YRP) have yielded substantial results, and therefore the same approaches will be replicated in the Samar project areas.
National scale up:
The key milestone achieved in 2022 is the adoption of ICDP by the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD). On 1st of December 2022, a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) was forged between Save the Children Philippines (SCP) and DSWD for the national scale up of the project.
The ICDP parenting programme will be implemented in 17 regions of the country and the training budget is included in the National Programme Management Office (NPMO) budgeting for 2023 – 2024. The ICDP facilitator level training of 90 people from 17 regions will start in May 2023. Out of this group, 34 people will pursue further training to become ICDP Trainers.