Parenting for Lifelong Health for Young Children - Thailand is a collaboration between the University of Oxford, the Mahidol Oxford Research Unit, the University of Cape Town, the Thai Ministry of Public Health, and UNICEF Thailand.
Violence against children is widely prevalent in Thailand, and has immediate and long-term adverse effects on physical and mental health. The goal of this study was to determine the cultural appropriateness and feasibility of the intervention in community-based hospital settings, and to assess intervention effectiveness in reducing the risk of violence against children, improving parental mental health, reducing child behavioural problems, and strengthening parent-child relationships.
The project involved the cultural adaptation and testing of an evidence-based parenting intervention for low-income families with children aged 2-9 years living in Udon Thani.
The original version of this programme was developed and tested in Cape Town, South Africa, as a culturally-relevant intervention drawn from core components common to effective social learning theory-based parenting programmes, but mainly trialled in high-income countries. The purpose of this collaboration is to develop, test, and widely disseminate a suite of affordable and freely available parenting programmes in low- and middle-income country contexts. In Thailand, the goal of the study was to determine the cultural appropriateness and feasibility of the intervention in community-based hospital settings, and to assess intervention effectiveness in reducing the risk of violence against children, improving parental mental health, reducing child behavioural problems, and strengthening parent-child relationships.
Findings from the recent randomized controlled trial (N=120) indicated that the programme reduced child maltreatment by 58%, harsh and abusive parenting by 44%, parental mental health problems by 40%, and child behaviour problems by 60% in the intervention group in comparison to a control condition of services as usual. The University of Oxford, the Ministry of Public Health, and UNICEF Thailand are currently planning to scale up the programme to a total of 7 provinces in Northeast Thailand.