This study will adapt the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) Teen programme to include an explicit focus on preventing violence against women and engagement of fathers for the Zimbabwean and pilot it to assess its effectiveness. It aims to answer the question: can a co-parenting programme to support parents reduce conflict in the family?
Context
Violence against women (VAW) and children (VAC) intersect in various and damaging ways. This has led to an acknowledgement about the need to bring together these separate strands of research and preventative approaches. While there is great evidence that parenting programmes can work to prevent VAC, they have also been identified as a promising avenue to address both simultaneously given the impact that both forms of violence can have on parenting and the importance of parenting as a key point of intervention to prevent present and future violence within the family.
Objectives
This study’s aim is twofold.
It aims to adapt the Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH) Teen programme to include a more explicit focus on preventing violence against women and engagement of fathers for the Zimbabwean context
It aims to pilot this adaptation and evaluate this pilot in terms of its impact on preventing VAW and VAC. This evaluation will include recommendations for the refinement of this adaptation and its feasibility for scale up and replication
Project Setting
This study will take place in Manicaland Province, Zimbabwe in collaboration with Plan International Zimbabwe and Clowns without Borders South Africa.
Significance and Wider Impact:
This study answers various calls to integrate solutions for the prevention of VAW and VAC. This study will adapt a parenting programme with an established body of evidence for its effectiveness in order to fill the gap that exists in parenting programmes in the low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) context that works to address VAW and VAC with a particular emphasis on actively engaging the couple as a unit.
