Parenting for lifelong health for young children

DOI: 10.13056/acamh.18958

In this podcast, we talk to Professor Catherine Ward of the Department of Psychology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and winner of ACAMH’s Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry (JCPP) Journal Best Paper Award 2021.

Catherine, and colleagues, won ACAMH’s 2021 award for JCPP Journal Best Paper for their paper, published in 2020, on ‘Parenting for lifelong health for young children: A randomized controlled trial of a parenting program in South Africa to prevent harsh parenting and child conduct problems’. Catherine sets the scene by explaining what winning the award meant to her, and what, in her view, made the trial itself, and the paper, so successful.

Catherine details her work involving evidence-based approaches designed to reduce the likelihood of children becoming aggressive, and provides insight into another key strand of her work, which focuses on preventing child maltreatment and understanding the epidemiology of risk factors faced by South African children.

Catherine then talks about her co-authored edited volume ‘Youth Violence: Sources and Solutions in South Africa’ and discusses how you can go about adapting this kind of evidence base to have a global reach, including surface adaptations and substantive adaptations, as well as how you can really make a difference.

Furthermore, Catherine explores what more she would like to see being done to disseminate and promote evidence-based research, as well as to include influencing policymakers.