A growing body of evidence has shown that caregivers’ own mental health, and well-being impacts their ability to provide nurturing care. Preventive support for caregivers’ mental health is key to promoting optimal child development especially in resource-constrained settings where caregivers face multiple stressors with limited support.  

 

To address this gap, UNICEF in collaboration with the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) and WHO, developed the Caring for the Caregiver (CFC) package. The objective of CFC is to increase frontline workers’ capacity to provide adequate counselling and parenting support services. Using a family centered approach, the CFC intervention activities improve caregivers’ emotional well-being and their social support to enable nurturing care for improved child development outcomes. The package is gender-sensitive and accompanied by an adolescent supplement to address the unique challenges of adolescent caregivers.