Evaluation report
Capacity Building in Nurturing Care in Serbia
Svetlana Mladenović Janković, Dušanka Matijević, Gordana Tamburkovski, A Grujičić, M Markovic ·
Summary
Written by AI, not yet AICS's view · claude-haiku-4-5-20251001This evaluation describes a training programme for home visitors in Serbia on early child development and nurturing care, supported by UNICEF across 25 primary health centres. The training covered topics including attachment, developmental monitoring, play, postpartum depression, and working with vulnerable families. After implementation, home visitors showed substantial increases in knowledge and applied these skills with nearly 15,000 families, with improvements observed in parent-child interactions, responsive feeding, and age-appropriate play.
Key points
- Knowledge increase among 150 home visitors ranged from 57.6% to 82.9%
- Skills were applied with 14,912 families over 2 years, 34.5% of whom were socially deprived
- Parent-child interactions improved by 32.6%, responsive feeding by 27.4%, and age-appropriate play by 34.4%
- Training content adapted from UNICEF 'Supporting Families for Nurturing Care' modules
- A monitoring system and assessment checklists were essential for translating training into practice
Limitations
The evaluation does not include a comparison group, so improvements cannot be attributed solely to the training versus other factors. Long-term sustainability of knowledge and practice changes beyond the 2-year implementation period is not reported.
Abstract
Abstract Background Training program for home visitors on early child development was developed and implemented within UNICEF supported projects involving 25 primary health centers. Training content was notably based on resource modules “Supporting Families for Nurturing Care”, adapted according to the local context. Health professionals are seen as the critical actors to support development of young children and their families. Family-centered approach that addresses social as well as medical dimensions of problems became priority in their practice with a special focus on working with children from socially deprived settings and children with disabilities. Objectives The main objective was to improve knowledge and practice of home visitors on early child development based on most recent scientific evidence. Broad spectrum of topics was covered including engaging fathers, early detection of postpartum depression, attachment, developmental monitoring, age-appropriate play, home safety, stigma and discrimination. Training were organized as interactive face to face sessions and online courses and attendees were actively engaged in reflection. Comprehensive check list with various assessment instruments was developed to provide guidance to home visitors in implementation of gained skills. Results Increase in knowledge of 150 home visitors was between 57.6% and 82.9%. Enhanced knowledge and skills have been applied in 14912 families of which socially deprived was 34.5% during 2-year period of implementation. Parent-child interactions, assessed by visiting nurses, were improved by 32.6%, responsive feeding practices by 27.4%, while age-appropriate play by 34.4% after interventions during home visits. Conclusions Well-developed monitoring system was crucial for implementation of gained knowledge and skills in practice of home visitors. Key messages Home visitors were empowered to take a strengths-based approach in their work with families. Developed tools facilitated prioritization of most vulnerable families and tailoring support according to needs.
Findings the Hub has extracted
Each claim below is labelled by its type of design and links back to this report.
- Intervention
- Capacity building training programme for home visitors covering early child development topics including attachment, developmental monitoring, age-appropriate play, postpartum depression screening, engaging fathers, home safety, and stigma reduction; delivered as interactive face-to-face sessions an
- Population
- 150 home visitors from 25 primary health centres in Serbia; they subsequently worked with 14,912 families including 34.5% from socially deprived backgrounds
Key finding
Home visitor knowledge increased by 57.6% to 82.9% across different topics