Wolfson Centre Lecture Series - Parenting in Emergencies

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‘Parenting in Emergencies: Evidence and innovation to support children and their caregivers’

Professor Lucie Cluver, Professor of Child and Family Social Work, Dept of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford; Dept of Psychiatry and Mental Health, University of Cape Town

The past two years have been intensely stressful for children and families. The COVID pandemic has increased adult, child and adolescent mental health distress, alongside poverty and extended lockdowns.

Schools and services that traditionally alleviate the burden on families have been closed or had limited capacity. In addition, humanitarian crises such as Syria, Afghanistan, and now Ukraine are forcing families to care for children under constant physical and mental health danger. 

In this talk, we will discuss attempts to innovate - at speed - to provide the best evidence-based support to families in emergencies.

We use data from 12 randomised trials of parenting programmes in LMIC to develop a range of media-based and digital resources that aim to reach as many families as possible in crisis contexts.

These programmes - to date - have reached over 200 million people and been used in 33 national government responses. But we are - as Dr Jamie Lachman explains - ’stitching the parachute as we jump’, with challenges of building evidence as we simultaneously scale up on a multi-country level.