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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AHRI.CFC.Lancet.Global.Health.dataset
Impact of the UNICEF “Caring for the Caregiver” intervention on mental health, social support, and parenting stress: a six-country pre-post evaluation
| Name | Country code |
|---|---|
| Bhutan | BT |
| Brazil | BR |
| Serbia | RS |
| Sierra Leone | SL |
| Rwanda | RW |
| Zambia | ZM |
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
Pre-post intervetion interviews
· Caring for the caregiver validation study participants
Version
v1.0.0
Scope
| Topic | Vocabulary | URI |
|---|---|---|
| Parenting, prevention, behaviour change, mental health, social support, early childhood development | Africa Health Research Institute | www.ahri.org |
Coverage
127 geographic areas (villages, districts) across the 6 countries
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
| 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 |
| Name |
|---|
| Africa Health Research Institute |
| Name | Abbreviation | Role |
|---|---|---|
| United Nations Childrens Fund | UNICEF | Funder |
| 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
Co-primary Outcomes
- Parenting stress
- Depression
- Anxiety
- Social support
- General self-efficacy
Data collection
| Start | End |
|---|---|
| 2021-04-01 | 2022-07-18 |
Data processing
The data collected and captured on REDCap was uploaded to a MySQL database server within AHRI's secure server cluster.
Data Access
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.
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.AHRI.CFC.Lancet.Global.Health.dataset
| Name | Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Africa Health Research Institute | AHRI |