Nurturing a Program to Maturity before Taking It to Scale: Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting

In 2015, the United Nations set out a new sustainable development agenda based on human rights standards. One of its 17 goals is to end all forms of violence against children by 2030. An indicator of success will be the percentage of children who experience physical punishment and/or psychological aggression by caregivers. As a rights-based primary prevention program targeting physical and psychological punishment of children, Positive Discipline in Everyday Parenting (PDEP) provides a strategy to reach this goal. PDEP is founded on children’s rights to dignity, protection from violence, and participation in their learning. It takes parents into the minds of children in order to foster a transformation in their concept of ‘discipline’ - from controlling behavior through rewards and punishments to engaging children in respectful and collaborative problem solving.

Beginning as a book for parents published in 2007, PDEP evolved organically in response to community demand into an 8-week parent program that is being delivered in more than 30 countries. Its rapid implementation in widely diverse contexts has provided a ‘global pilot study’ for identifying common and unique challenges to implementation, adaptation and evaluation. In each setting, valuable lessons have been learned, demonstrating the importance of nurturing a program to maturity prior to taking it to scale. We have chosen to understand and address the many implementation and evaluation challenges before undertaking large-scale outcome evaluation. Our ongoing process-focused evaluations have led to the creation of a training and mentorship system that optimizes program fidelity, builds sustainability, and sets the stage for rigorous outcome evaluation. This presentation will highlight the key findings of our process evaluations and describe the implementation approach that they have generated.