First Steps' Big Step: Early Childhood development and positive parenting in Jordan SUMMARY
First Steps’ Big Step is a three-year programme funded for the first year by the Bernard van Leer Foundation and Plan International Netherlands. Its goal is for children under five years, born into vulnerable and marginalised households, receive the care, nurture and support services they need for healthy growth development to reach their full potential, free from harmful gendered norms and attitudes that are discriminatory and limiting. In order to achieve the this, the programme adopts two pathways that ensure parents and caregivers practice gender transformative and age appropriate non-violent parenting behaviours, and that Early Children Development becomes an integrated and comprehensive national priority in Jordan. It will be implemented across 15 Mother and Child Centres targeting 2,225 parents and 100 frontline staff implemented by Plan International and local partners. It is supported by a behavioural science research to capture best practices. Early childhood development creates a lasting impact on a child’s future outcomes as it lays the foundation for future wellbeing and resilience. Children living in poverty, social exclusion or affected by conflict often lack access to a safe, nurturing and supportive environment in which to grow. Evidence shows that parents living under such hardship have a particularly difficult time spending the mental energy required to provide ECD for their children. With the onset of the Syrian crisis in 2011, Jordan’s national social welfare systems and resources became severely strained and unable to meet the demand of new arrivals. Children account for 66% of the population and are impacted by poverty more than other age group. UNICEF observed that evidence required to monitor the development of children in Jordan needs improvement with inadequate data to inform policy and implementation of social services for children. Therefore we will support the National ECD Team to focus on this gap. Parenting programmes will be installed within health centres to reach more parents on the importance of ECD and positive parenting. Our primary investment objective is to effectively support parents and caregivers to be more responsive and empowered to nurture children in an safe, enabling environment where ECD services are integrated across service providers and sectors to become a national priority. To create access to quality ECD services and for ECD to be prioritised, demand needs to be generated bottom up from parents/ caregivers as well as supported top down. By advancing postive parenting across multiple government bodies this project ensures that children are more effectively nurtured and parents are enabled to better support children’s developmental milestones and protect child’s rights. 
We will roll out the parenting model by year three in 15 health centres across Jordan. These centres have been selected in collaboration with government and partner organisations based on a mapping of all 600 health centres, and a criteria for population diversity, and number of persons in the health centre catchment. We will conduct behavioural science research to investiagte the most effective and impactful approaches to integrate into our parenting currculum and mode of delivery and outreach. 13% of children aged 36-59 months are attending ECD programs, compared to 22% in 2012 in Jordan. There are significant shortcomings in access, participation and quality of current ECD provision according to a recent HRD report. To address these gaps and build on lessons learned, Plan International is implementing a follow-on project that builds on the first 2-year project by scaling-up parenting services to 15 health centres, continued engagement in national policy change through the ECD Team. This project empowers parents through community-based approaches to learning to create a more nurturing home environment to better respond to children’s needs without gender discrimination or violence. It will use a revised parenting curriculum with lessons learned from past programming pulling on ECD theory, psychosocial support for parents and violence prevention, as well as gender transformative learning. While in parallel enacting structures within the national architecture to sustain policy level changes to integrate ECD as a comprehensive approach to the care for young children. Through strategic alliances with the Jordanian Ministry of Health and Education, national CBOs and NGOs as well as UNICEF Jordan. Caregivers of young children from vulnerable backgrounds e.g. refugees, asylum seekers, families living in poverty or affected by other discrimination prohibiting  integration into the community. ECD services for children under 6 years old will be provided. Finally adult professionals at the Ministry of Health, Education and MOH centres. In year one the project will focus on capacity building for the local partners, especially the ROYAL HEALTH AWARENESS SOCIETY (RHAS) who will take over responsibility for implementing the parenting package inside the MOH health centres nation wide. As such the first 6 months is an inception phase focussed on planning, training, mapping and preparing the teams to deliver quality programming to the most in need communities. Further, we will be adapting our parenting curriculum to reflect the most up-to-date guidance from global leaders in ECD and to reflect best practices from the first project. This will be done in consultation with partners, stakeholders and UNICEF. 

During this time, our behavioural science research partner will conduct background research and scoping of the problems related to poor positive parenting update among marginalised groups in Jordan. Additionally, the National ECD Team will resume activities and begin to make strides in order to prioritise ECD at the national level across all sectors. Due to the focus on COVID-19 response and resources demanded led by the MOH our main stakeholder, there has been a negative shift in focus from the previous project cycle away from ECD to prioritise the public health emergency. Therefore it is essential to maintain visibility among ministerial partners of the long term importance to focus on ECD for young children. 

From January, we will begin service delivery either via an online platform, or in person workshops with parents and caregivers depending on the current covid-19 movement restrictions and ensuring the safety of the community is at the forefront. Our curriculum will be digitalise to ensure easy adaptation based on the operational context ensure the safety of the most vulnerable is always prioritised. This will be closely followed by behavioural science specialists to support, track and monitor the uptake and impact n order to learn and adapt the approach as needed. Plan focuses on building human and social capital as it is integral to strategic community investment; it leverages and multiplies the impact of the intervention by strengthening local partner organizations, increasing the likelihood of project success and sustainability. Plan has focused part of its intervention in government-run health centres instead of stand alone sites to increase the likelihood that the MOH can integrate this approach into their core functionality in the long term. Working hand in hand with MOH staff and through local partners already well integrated into the national systems, Plan International will provide capacity building and training opportunities for health and education staff ECD, psychosocial support, refugee and migrant rights, child protection identification and referral. This seeks to strengthen the uptake of ECD for vulnerable populations from the grassroots tot he ministerial level and thereby creating space and prioritisation at national level.