The Challenge

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of a parent’s role in child development for all nations, and UNICEF’s strategy to mitigate the effects of the pandemic relies on parents to maintain the continuity of essential early-stage childhood development.

UNICEF has already supported the Government of Indonesia to develop the Holistic and Integrative ECD (HI-ECD) strategy and is now considering the importance of SBCC in the delivery of this strategy as ECD is a behavioural issue at its heart. It requires a large range of stake holders to adopt new positive behaviours and abandon harmful ones. Communicating the right information to the right people to enact real behaviour change requires a deep understanding of the context, the target audience and behavioural science.

The SBCC strategy needs to provide a detailed workplan for evidence-based activities to support parents and caregivers of young children aged 0-6 years old.

All strategies should be based in the strategic context, in this case the national HI-ECD, and therefore we will approach the strategy from the same holistic perspective, but the activities and outputs will be highly focused on encourage parents and caregivers to practice behaviours that help ensure the continuity of childhood development despite the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Objectives

MAGENTA will develop a rigorous and evidence based SBCC strategy to support the national HI-ECD programme. Specifically, we will aim at:

1. Constructing a common understanding of the importance of early childhood development amongst our programme participants.

2. Influencing behaviours (of parents/caregivers as well as policy makers/practitioners) that promote optimal child development.

While the SBCC strategies will be designed for Sorong and Raja Ampat districts, as directed at this pilot stage of the campaign, they are expected to be taken to the national level, and therefore this will be taken into consideration for the final strategy.During the design process, MAGENTA will develop specific objectives and corresponding indicators based on our understanding of the situation. Those will be detailed in a M&E framework and plan.

Social and Behavioural Insights

STAKEHOLDER INTERVIEWS

What are the challenges being faced by ECD programming?

• COVID-19 restricts:

  • Ability to Monitor programmes.

  • Ability to mentor parents.

• There is a lot of knowledge about parenting, but parents need to have their values and behaviours changed as well.

• Lack of feedback, monitoring and evaluation of existing programmes.

• Lack of sustainability of programmes that can operate at village level.

• Events and trainings are attended by those whose behaviour is already most inline with objectives Target Audiences need to be better selected.

What are the barriers to parents supporting their child optimally?

• COVID-19 restricts:

  • Ability to play and therefore stimulation.

  • Development of confidence.

  • Ability of children to protect them selves from violence.

• Awareness of the importance of Parenting and the support availible.

• Support is often based on providing information rather than mentoring or changing the values of parenting.

• Superstitions and their own experience from their parents has a lot of impact on parenting behaviours.

• Some parents have high expectations of their children, “expecting a return on their investment in parenting”.

• Serious lack of knowledge and resoures relating to the parenting of children with dissabilities.

PARENT INTERVIEWS

What are the imapcts of COVID-19 on ECD?

• Parent’s loss of income has had a significant impact on their ability to prioritize nutrition and health.

• Children’s consistent presence at home has allowed par-ents to become more involved in their learning, development and nurturing.

What are the sources of information for ECD for parents?

• Parents heavily rely on parenting tips and knowledge given to them by teachers from their children’s school

• Many parents refer to social media for parenting tips.

• Most parents mentioned reference to religion and God as a source of support for parenting practices and instilling values and morals.

What are the gaps in ECD knowledge and resources for parents?

• Many parents are concerned about nutrition knowledge and their ability to ensure their child is getting the correct nutrients and vitamins.

• Some parents worry they lack health knowledge which can lead to obesity and other health issues.

• Many parents unaware of responsive care giving and what these entails.

• Often parents lack the knowledge to help children in their new needs caused by increased presence at home (ie. Can-not help with homework, entertaining them etc).

What We Did

1. Inception Phase

   • Inception Report

2. Rapid Behavioural Research

   • Desk review

   • Stakeholder consultations

   • Situational Analysis

3. Strategy Development

   • Strategy Development Workshop

   • Strategy Development

4. Implementation and M&E Plan

   • Implementation Plan Development

   • M&E Framework and Tools Development

Impact

To address the challenge highlighted above, MAGENTA created an evidence based SBCC strategy to support parental response to COVID-19 specifically targeted at parents and caregivers of young children aged 0-6.

In order toInfluence and improve parents’/cargivers’ knowledge, attitude and practice on nurturing care particularly during the pandemic situation.