ADAPTING EARLY CHILDHOOD PARENTING EDUCATION INITIATIVES IN SECONDARY AND PRIMARY HEALTH CARE SETTINGS: A PRACTICE MODEL

Responsive parenting is one of the most crucial elements in early childhood development. various platforms have reported that children provided with such interactions in the earliest years of life tend to thrive better in their early childhood and later life. However, parenting interactions are widely dependent upon parenting confidence and their knowledge and understanding regarding early years. Several initiatives focus on early childhood responsive parenting but there remains a vacuum of providing core support in the first six months of life. This support is essential and fundamental to establishing the foundations of early parent-child relationships. Healthcare settings could play a pivotal role in providing basic parenting education around newborn parenting and responsive caregiving. In this paper, we will discuss the model adopted in two of the primary and secondary healthcare settings of Pakistan and Afghanistan whereby we have implemented an early childhood newborn parenting education program. The descriptive paper details the concept taken to place parenting education as a center of women and children healthcare center, the content that is developed to provide training to the parents of newborns, the process applied to implement the parenting intervention training in both field sites, its financial implications and how the effectiveness and feasibility of this intervention are planned. Additionally, it could provide insights to the practitioners pertinent to how and what of implementation of parenting interventions in healthcare settings.