Parents and Caregivers Need Support to Provide Nurturing Care to Young Children

To reach their full potential, children ages 0 to 3 need nurturing care from parents and other primary caregivers. Beyond basic health and safety, nurturing care includes responsive, sensitive, and stimulating caregiver-child interactions. Parenting programs can support parents and caregivers to provide this type of care and can also help create enabling environments that include time, resources, and emotional support backed by policies, services, and communities.

Adapting and delivering effective parenting programs across different contexts and systems remains a challenging task for researchers, program leaders, policymakers, and donors. In response to these challenges, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation has supported Stellenbosch University and PRB to develop three resources to equip stakeholders with key elements of successful parenting programs, actionable insights, and clear steps forward.

Available on this page you will find:

• Nurturing care and early childhood development program roadmap (brief and companion factsheet). These resources offer eight guiding questions and corresponding recommendations that can be used to inform the design, implementation, evaluation, and scale-up of parenting programs to promote nurturing care and early childhood development.
• Guidance for donors to support nurturing care (factsheet): This resource draws from a synthesis of global research and guidelines to outline six key elements of successful parenting programs and offers four actions for donors who seek to promote high-quality, evidence-based parenting programs.

Learn more about the Hilton Foundation’s early childhood development portfolio and see a collection of resources from a December 2023 convening focused on supporting adolescent mothers to provide their children with nurturing care.

Featured Photo Credit: Jonathan Torgovnik/Getty Images/Images of Empowerment