CLICS-Parenting Workshop - Nipccd

Parenting Workshop
The CLICS program has evolved with an innovative idea, Parenting Workshop, to reach
would-be-parents and parents of children less than 1 year with the methods and skill to
help in overall development of the child as well as the child survival messages. These
workshops provide an excellent mechanism for teaching mothers, fathers and newlyweds
about how to achieve better health for children and their mothers.
The prime purpose of this programme is to assist parents and would-be-parents by
empowering them with the right knowledge. With proper parenting education, parents
will be able to identify danger signs among children, and they will learn to seek proper
care when a child falls sick. This will reduce the child morbidity and mortality. The
growth & development of children will improve because parents will be able to pay better
attention to their nutrition and development needs. Emphasis is put on making the family
environment and decision-making process in the families more conducive for the overall
development of children. This new approach blends the traditional wisdom of parenting
with newfound scientific facts. Although the main focus of parenting workshop is Early
Childhood Care and Development, it is also utilized to introduce other reproductive
health issues to the target group, e.g. maternal health, contraception & abortion services
& gender issues.
Method of conducting Parenting Workshop:
Participants: The beneficiaries include all couples who either have not completed their
families or they have a child less than 1 year of age. About 15-20 couples attend the
parenting workshop.
Venue: The venue for the workshop is in the respective village only. In consultation with
the ‘Panchayat’ and ‘Self-help-group’ a venue, Panchayat Bhavan, school or any other set
up is identified, where the workshop can be conducted. While identifying the venue, care
will be taken to find out a place where facility of electricity is available.
Facilitators: One Medical Officer, one ANM and two - three Community Organizers
make one team of facilitator and they conduct parenting workshop. All the facilitators
receive adequate training to conduct each session of the workshop.
Content and Methodology: The topics during the workshop are care during pregnancy,
care of newborn babies, child nutrition, immunization, care during sickness and child
development.
The sessions during the workshop are mostly interactive in nature and techniques like
role play, story discussion, resistance skill training, toy making technique etc. is utilized
to make these sessions interesting, and thus, achieve its objectives. Problem-solving
exercises are used so that the participants get better understanding of the topics. Effort is
also made to improve dialogue between the husband and wife on issues related to child
health and development. The strategies, which are used to increase the communication,
include; i) making the husband and wife sitting together during the workshop, ii) making
the husband and wife solve the problems or exercises together.

The Government health worker and the Anganwadi worker of the village are also invited
to act as resource persons during the workshop. The couples, who complete the course,
will be provided a certificate of parenting as an incentive.
Duration: The workshop is of 10 hours duration spread over two days.
Relevance to CLICS Program:
The parenting workshop forms one of the very strong components of Behavior Change
Interventions, designed under CLICS. The present operational result will help establish
evidence for effectiveness of ‘parenting workshop’ and thus disseminate the lessons of
parenting workshops to the partners and other NGOs for further scaling up of the project.