The programme aims to address four familial processes associated with GBV: poor parental bonding and child attachment; harsh parenting and corporal punishment; differential socialisation by gender; and, parental conflict. Its formative evaluation was successfully undertaken in a district in central Uganda between October 2014 and September 2016 and evaluated to determine the appropriateness and relevance of the content and the overall strategy for delivery of the intervention, including the process of negotiating access, mobilising communities, recruitment of parent groups, appropriate approach to engage fathers and parental couples in the programme, and recruitment and training of facilitators. ‘Parenting for Respectability’ (PfR) is unique because it draws from parents’ pre-exiting motivation to enhance family respectability through children’s appropriate behaviour, it deliberately recruits fathers, and combines programming on child violence and gender based violence.
This project was funded by Sexual Violence Research Initiative SVRI Bernard van Leer Foundation (BvLF), Netherlands OAK Foundation and Glasgow University for 7 years.
The main objectives were: a) design and development of the draft programme and manual, b) conduct its formative evaluation.
The study started with a pre- post evaluation to generate initial quantitative and qualitative evidence of the effectiveness of the PfR programme in modifying key outcome measures on parent-child relationships, relationships between partners and SGBV.
After the study, the feasibility of the programme was in a 16-session group-based parenting program, Parenting for Respectability, in semi-rural Ugandan communities. Pre-post comparisons found large effects for parent-reported reduced harsh parenting and reduced spousal violence. Children also reported reduced harsh parenting by fathers and mothers with reduction in harsh parenting ranging between, 27% to 29% in the various categories. Both parents and children reported reduced dysfunctional parent relationships; with reductions ranging between 22% to 28%. Parents who attended more than 50% of the program reported greater effects on reduced dysfunctional relationships.
