COVID‑19 and Early Childhood Development in Rural India

Background: ‘Stepping Stones’ program is a cluster RCT aimed to improve parental competencies for early childhood development of children under 2 from rural India. Backed by Grand Challenges Canada, Saving Brains, this initiative focuses on multiple aspects of Early Childhood Development to enhance children’s cognitive potential in their first 1000 days. This program aims to empower primary caregivers to promote overall child development. On March 22, 2020, India went into lockdown due to the Coronavirus Disease-19 (COVID-19) pandemic. The COVID-19 crisis has profound implications for the care and early childhood development intervention programs. In India, millions of children have limited access to nurturing care. Poverty and low education influence parent’s ability to give their children the best start in early life. This further affects a child’s development, health, well-being, and school readiness. Caregiver’s knowledge about child development and their ability to gain and practice those skills is needed for stimulating a home environment conducive for early child development. This paper aims to study the effect of family-centered programs on caregivers and their children during COVID-19.

Methods: This Cluster Randomized Trial was implemented in rural areas of India. Clusters were randomly divided into intervention and control arms. A total of 326 parents of children aged from 0 to 2 years were recruited through a phone survey. The intervention group received a family-centered parenting program for children aged 0-2 years for 6 months through e-platform. The control group received routine care. The baseline and end-line data on developmental scores of children were collected, and developmental scores were analyzed. Parents were assessed and analyzed for changes in knowledge and skills about child development. The effect of the intervention on the child development outcomes is analyzed. All analyses were performed using the STATA version 14.

Results: At the endpoint, caregivers from the intervention group had significantly higher scores on knowledge for responsive parenting than those from their control arm. The statistically significant effect of the intervention was reflected on the home environment, mother-child interaction, motor, language, and socio-emotional development.

Conclusion: During COVID-19, a family-centered parenting program has shown to be an effective approach for improving parents' competencies and confidence to improve their children's developmental scores.