Children First, Winter 2007: Expanding My Family (2)

Expanding the programme

Through Children First, the My Family package is being developed in a second format for families of children between the ages of 7 and 19 years of age, which will focus on communication and life skills training for both the children and their parents. A more compact core version of the package will also be implemented through a wider variety of agencies and organisations in 2007 — including municipalities, the military and NGOs.

The Ministry of National Education (MONE) General Directorate of Non–formal Education lead a workshop for fifty representatives of MONE, SHÇEK, MOJ, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, the Mother and Child Education Foundation (AÇEV) and UNICEF in August 2006 with a view to developing an expansion strategy for My Family. As part of the strategy, which is under review, a core version of the original programme was developed for ease of application where parents live in hard–to–reach areas or are otherwise unable to attend all sixteen of the original planned modules. The core version has six essential modules: listening and learning together; understanding feelings and expressing ourselves; understanding children’s behaviour; positive methods of discipline; the importance of play in child development; the future and what shall we do now?

This more compact version of My Family will be relatively simple to implement for municipalities, NGOs and the military which have become increasingly aware of the need to improve the situation of women and children over recent years.

For some time there has also been a commensurate need to combine resources on health, water and sanitation and education, especially pre–school education, in order to reduce and prevent problems such as high infant mortality, high incidence of malnutrition, low rates of enrolment and attendance of girls in primary education, increased numbers of children resorting to street life and high incidence of violence and abuse — to name but a few of the symptoms that characterise child poverty.

My Family should prove to be a significant component of the long term solution to child poverty in Turkey. One of the few long term studies into the benefits of ECD, the Perry Preschool Longitudinal Study published by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation in 2005, found that a $1 investment in ECD returned $17 over 30 years.

Involving fathers

All partners in the My Family package agree that it is essential to encourage greater involvement of fathers in the parenting training sessions. Gender roles are quite strictly defined by tradition in Turkey and child rearing is very much seen as the job of mothers while fathers take a more low key role in the development of very young children especially. The nationwide acceptance and use of good child rearing practices is dependant on changing this attitude.

A campaign to encourage more involvement from fathers in the My Family training sessions was launched when My Family was implemented in 2005. A letter, emphasising the importance of the paternal role in child rearing and highlighting the positive support men can offer their partners was circulated to fathers in 25,000 homes within the framework of My Family. When canvassed for their opinion regarding points raised in the letter, most fathers expressed an interest, especially in the stories illustrating positive results of parental training, and responded positively to the concept of improving communication within their families. There was a notable increase in numbers of fathers attending the sessions with the campaign.

Since military service is mandatory for all young men in Turkey, implementation of the core version through the services will be a major step forward for the next generation of fathers. Although few will be able to practice the lessons learned in the core modules — being out of regular contact with their families — it is expected that many will have a more open attitude to good child rearing practices by the time they complete their military service and may even be prepared to revisit the My Family training in civil life.

Families in hard–to–reach areas

Maximising delivery of the package to families in rural areas remains a significant goal in the expansion of the programme since access to basic services tends to be low and rates of child poverty are conversely high — making rurally based families a prime target audience for the package.

Reaching families in hard–to–reach rural areas is problematic, however. Rural populations are typically involved in agricultural work and the seasonal migration of entire families as they follow harvests creates attendance problems for many parents. In Şanlıurfa, for instance, many were unable to complete the full programme of sixteen modules. Low rates of literacy mean that many parents have difficulty following even the simplest texts.

The core package will play an important role in this respect since it will be easier for rurally based parents to complete and the more succinct messages should prove to be even more easy for those lacking literacy skills to assimilate. Attendance at the Adult Education Centres has also been problematic for many since these are located in towns and cities. One solution has been to arrange training venues in primary schools, thereby reducing travel costs and increasing access at the same time.

Previous page  |  Next page

ARCHIVE

Search UNICEF Turkey
   

• Advanced Search

Download the Children First Bulletin, Winter 2007 edition, in pdf format. [PDF 1.2MB]

 * How to use RSS …