Peer-reviewed article
Promoting responsive care and early learning practices among caregivers of children 0–23 months in the Kyrgyz Republic: findings from integrating a counselling intervention with nutrition services
Lesley Oot, Veronica W. Varela, Cholpon Abdimitalipova, Marie Paul Nisingizwe, Kristen Cashin et al. ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This study tested a counselling intervention to promote responsive care and early learning practices among caregivers of infants and toddlers in two regions of Kyrgyzstan. Health workers and community volunteers delivered the intervention through existing nutrition and health services. The intervention significantly improved responsive care practices, increased early learning opportunities in homes, reduced parenting stress, and improved complementary feeding practices. Integrating the early learning counselling with nutrition services was found to strengthen rather than disrupt nutrition outcomes.
Key points
- Statistically significant increases in responsive care and early learning (RCEL) practices were found after intervention
- Availability of early learning opportunities in the home increased
- Parenting stress decreased
- Complementary feeding practices improved
- Integration of RCEL counselling with nutrition services showed synergistic benefits rather than negative effects
Limitations
The document does not provide specific numerical results or effect sizes. The study lacks details on comparison groups, baseline values, or statistical significance thresholds, making it difficult to assess the magnitude of changes.
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: package into nutrition services after 10 months of implementation. DESIGN: We measured changes in RCEL practices through a pre- and post-intervention assessment comprising a household survey and observations. To implement the intervention, we trained health service staff and community volunteers to deliver RCEL counselling to caregivers of children 0-23 months of age through existing community and facility-level platforms. SETTING: Jalal-Abad and Batken regions in the Kyrgyz Republic. PARTICIPANTS: Caregivers of children aged 0-23 months at baseline. RESULTS: We found statistically significant increases in RCEL practices, availability of early learning opportunities in the home, decreases in parenting stress and improvements in complementary feeding practices after the intervention implementation period. CONCLUSIONS: was associated with improved responsive care practices and early learning opportunities. We also found that integration of RCEL with infant and young child feeding counselling did not disrupt nutrition service delivery or negatively affect complementary feeding outcomes, but rather suggest synergistic benefits. Given the importance of providing holistic care to support optimal early childhood development, these findings provide new evidence on how to strengthen the delivery of nurturing care services in the Kyrgyz Republic.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Counselling intervention on responsive care and early learning (RCEL) integrated with nutrition services, delivered by trained health service staff and community volunteers through existing community and facility-level platforms
- Population
- Caregivers of children aged 0-23 months in Jalal-Abad and Batken regions, Kyrgyz Republic
Key finding
Statistically significant increases in RCEL practices