Caring Families (Parenting for Lifelong Health for Young Children)
Helping parents give children the best start in life.

- Crnogorski
- English
- Shqip
How do parents develop positive relationships with their children and apply non-violent discipline? Since early 2018, parents across Montenegro – who have attended the parenting programme “Parenting for Lifelong Health for Young Children” delivered by various cities’ Primary Healthcare Centres, kindergartens and civil society organizations – answered these questions over the course of three months and through 12 modules, as they learned about positive child-rearing practices.
Between January 2018 and December 2023, over 1,500 parents were reached by the programme across Montenegro. The programme is intended for parents of children aged two to nine years.
The key parenting skills that this programme aims to develop include: quality time with the child, child-led play, socio-emotional regulation, encouraging desirable behaviour through praise and rewards, giving instructions, setting boundaries and household rules, non-violent discipline techniques, and brief activities based on mindfulness techniques, which help parents develop stress management skills.
The results of the programme effectiveness study, conducted in May 2018, highlight, among other findings, the programme’s positive impact on reducing physical and emotional punishment, decreasing children’s behavioural issues and lowering parental depression.
This programme is part of a larger suite of parenting programmes called “Parenting for Lifelong Health” which are open-access, non-commercialized and offered free-of-charge to parents. These programmes have been developed and rigorously tested through a collaboration between the WHO, UNICEF, the Universities of Cape Town and Stellenbosch in South Africa and the Universities of Oxford and Bangor in the United Kingdom, and are being implemented worldwide.
Additional information:
Scaling up Parenting for Lifelong Health in Montenegro – A feasibility assessment
Referral of Families to the “Caring Families” Programme – Guidelines for Centres for Social Work in Montenegro