Impact of the UNICEF “Caring for the Caregiver” intervention on mental health, social support, and parenting stress: a six-country pre-post evaluation

Bhutan, Brazil, Serbia...and 3 more, 2021 - 2022

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Reference ID

AHRI.CFC.Lancet.Global.Health.dataset

Producer(s)

Redinger Stephanie, Rochat Tamsen, Houle Brian

Metadata

Documentation in PDF DDI/XML JSON

Created on

Mar 31, 2026

Last modified

Mar 31, 2026

Page views

31622

Downloads

117

Identification

Survey ID number

AHRI.CFC.Lancet.Global.Health.dataset

Title

Impact of the UNICEF “Caring for the Caregiver” intervention on mental health, social support, and parenting stress: a six-country pre-post evaluation

Country

Name	Country code
Bhutan	BT
Brazil	BR
Serbia	RS
Sierra Leone	SL
Rwanda	RW
Zambia	ZM

Abstract

The UNICEF Caring for the Caregiver package is a counselling approach and behaviour change intervention that can be integrated into routine home-visiting. We aimed to evaluate caregiver outcomes and explore intervention experiences in six low-income and middle-income countries (Bhutan, Brazil, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Rwanda, and Zambia). Using a non-randomised pragmatic design, we recruited caregivers in using community-based sampling. Caregivers reported dose exposure and completed pre-post outcome measures of self-efficacy, social support, depression , anxiety and parenting stress. Using pooled data, two-way fixed effects regressions examined change and variations in outcomes, by dose. Perception data were collected from caregivers and frontline workers.

Study Aim: The research has three aims: (1) to assess change in outcomes linked to intervention targets; (2) to explore whether change in outcomes differed by reported dose exposure level; and (3) to explore frontline workers' and caregivers' perceptions of the intervention

Kind of Data

Pre-post intervetion interviews

Unit of Analysis

· Caring for the caregiver validation study participants

Version

Version Description

v1.0.0

Scope

Topics

Topic	Vocabulary	URI
Parenting, prevention, behaviour change, mental health, social support, early childhood development	Africa Health Research Institute

Keywords

fontline workers, emotional awareness, self-care, coping skills, family cohesion, communication, conflict resolution

Coverage

Geographic Coverage

127 geographic areas (villages, districts) across the 6 countries

Universe

A non-randomised pragmatic study of the impact of the caring for the caregiver intervention integrated into routine frontline worker visits. We trained 198 frontline workers and recruited 822 pregnant and postnatal caregivers, receiving the intervention from 198 frontline workers in 127 unique areas across six countries.

Producers and sponsors

Primary investigators

Name	Affiliation
Redinger Stephanie	DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development, University of the Witwatersrand, SAMRC/Developmental Pathways to Health Research Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
Rochat Tamsen	School of Psychology, Faculty of Health and Education, Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, SAMRC/Developmental Pathways to Health Research Unit, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand
Houle Brian	School of Demography, The Australian National University, SAMRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt), School of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand

Producers

Name
Africa Health Research Institute

Funding Agency/Sponsor

Name	Abbreviation	Role
United Nations Childrens Fund	UNICEF	Funder

Other Identifications/Acknowledgments

Name	Affiliation	Role
Njabulo Dayi	Africa Health Research Institute	Data management
Caitlin Briedenhann	DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence in Human Development, University of the Witwatersrand	Data cleaning

Sampling

Sampling Procedure

Co-primary Outcomes

1. Parenting stress
2. Depression
3. Anxiety
4. Social support
5. General self-efficacy

Data collection

Dates of Data Collection

Start	End
2021-04-01	2022-07-18

Data processing

Data Editing

The data collected and captured on REDCap was uploaded to a MySQL database server within AHRI's secure server cluster.

Access policy

Access conditions

Access to the data requires accurate completion of the online data access application form accessible on the AHRI Data repository(<https://data.ahri.org/>). Data users are required to abide by the data use conditions stipulated on the application for access to the data. Failure to do so may result in their data access privileges being revoked by the Data Custodian. In order to recognise the effort and intellectual contributions of AHRI investigators in producing and curating the data, users of AHRI data must acknowledge the source of the data and abide by the terms and conditions under which the data is accessed and must cite the dataset in publication using the citation provided as part of this documentation. All analytical datasets published on the AHRI Data Repository are assigned digital object identifier (DOIs) and the DOIs can be found on the Data Repository under Study Description tab - Access policy. AHRI data users are required to always cite the dataset using the relevant DOI.

Citation requirements

Stephanie, R., Tamsen, R., & Brian, H. (2026). Impact of the UNICEF “Caring for the Caregiver” intervention on mental health, social support, and parenting stress: a six-country pre-post evaluation [Data set]. Africa Health Research Institute.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.23664/AHRI.CFC.LANCET.GLOBAL.HEALTH.DATASET

Metadata production

DDI Document ID

DDI.AHRI.CFC.Lancet.Global.Health.dataset

Producers

Name	Abbreviation
Africa Health Research Institute	AHRI

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