Scaling Parenting Interventions in Côte d’Ivoire through rigorous piloting, monitoring, testing and adaptation

Côte d’Ivoire’s government is investing in early childhood development (ECD), considering a wide range of possible interventions for which evidence on cost-effectiveness is scarce. The project team is working with four government partners to implement and learn from two at-scale randomized evaluations of early childhood psycho-social stimulation interventions, testing impacts and comparing costs of different implementation modalities for parental training on early childhood stimulation. Experimental design variations reflect context-specific aspects including household and community norms around parenting and are being tested with the goal to inform further scaling.
The project aims to:

1. ensure maximum learning from the two ongoing RCTs, and notably to improve endline measures to obtain valid and reliable observed measures of children’s cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes through standardized direct child assessment with COVID-19-adapted protocols. These are essential to respond to demands from, and maximize credibility with, principal government stakeholders; and

2. intensify engagements with the different government partners, including those leading important scaling efforts under the flagship ECD projects and initiatives (PMNDPE and SE-CONNAPE), to enssure optimal learning from these RCTs including through enhanced process evaluations, ownership of operational lessons and impact evaluation findings, as well as cost documentation and analysis.

For a synthesis of the evidence on early childhood stimulation programs from 11 low- and middle-income countries, see the related policy insight.