Implementing Family Skills Interventions in Low and Middle Income Countries: Results of a UNODC Multi-Site Project

Secure and healthy parent/child attachment; parental supervision, monitoring, and effective discipline; communication of pro-social family values; parental involvement in child’s life; supportive parenting; and, a cohesive and organized family environment are the characteristics of the family that help to protect children from risky behaviours such as early and unprotected sex, drug use and delinquency, violence that make them more vulnerable to HIV/AIDS and contribute to their capacity to overcome adverse situations and achieve positive outcomes. This is why, families is one of the strongest social institutions carrying a significant impact on the lives of children and early adolescence.

While the evidence on the effectiveness of family skills strengthening programme in preventing risky behaviours in children and adolescents is growing in several countries, a significant gap both in terms of research and application of such programmes remains in low and middle income countries. UNODC as part of its global initiative to advocate for evidence based prevention programming has been implementing a global project piloting family skills programmes in at least 18 countries in 5 different geographical regions (Central Asia, Central America, South America, South-East Europe and in East Africa).The main programmes piloted are Strengthening the Families Programme (SFP 10-14) and Families And Schools Together (FAST). Since 2010, over 8,500 parents and child have benefited from these outputs, over 1,000 facilitators and around 200 trainer of facilitators have been trained.

Using a quasi-experimental study design, the adapted programmes have been showing significant changes at the level of parental functioning as well as on indicators of violence (within the family as well as in schools). The programmes seem to be functioning as well as in their original US format.

We will describe the field experience developed in the process of setting up a global multi-country UNODC prevention project: including the advocacy to mobilise governmental counterparts and policy makers to accept such pilots; the development and use of national cultural adaptation teams; the training and monitoring of culturally-adapted programme integrity and the evaluations of the implementation of the pilots (process and outcome) – value added; as well as the sustainability process plan for governmental counterpart to scale up the use of such programmes nationally and regionally. This would arm international researchers in the field of prevention with further knowledge and experience on complications, challenges and needs to account for during implementation in low and middle income countries,