What is the ECD Parenting Toolkit?
The Early Childhood Development Parenting Toolkit is an interactive platform designed to provide programme implementers, practitioners, and policymakers with: i) key definitions; ii) practical guiding questions and programming considerations; iii) a library of evidence-based resources to support the planning, design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, and uptake, and scaling of integrated parenting for ECD programmes. The toolkit also includes a typology of parenting programmes and annex of illustrate examples of parenting programme that users may refer to and learn more about.
The framing of this platform is based on three core evidence-based frameworks and resources: i) The Future of Parenting Programmes series; ii) UNICEF Vision for Elevating Parenting; and iii) the Nurturing Care Framework. The scope of the toolkit is aligned to the key definitions included below.
Key definitions
- Early childhood is typically defined as the period from birth to 8 years of age. Within this age range, birth up to primary school entry (with an emphasis on the first 1,000 days) is the most sensitive time for children’s physical growth and brain development.
- Early childhood development is an outcome, and encompasses the physical, cognitive, motor, language, social and emotional development of children in the early years.
- The term ‘parents’ is not limited to biological and adoptive parents but extends to any guardian or caregiver providing consistent care to children and adolescents. The term includes fathers, mothers, siblings, grandparents, other relatives, legal guardians, and foster caregivers; it includes both adults and adolescents who may be parents themselves.
- Parenting support must be multilevel, multi-platform, and multi-age, and must move beyond approaching parents as recipients of information or education, to a more collaborative partnership where there is a co-construction of support for the child as well as for/with the parents themselves.