Mother and Child Education Program in Palestinian Refugee Camps

Yale University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Parenting

Treatments: Behavioral: MOCEP

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT02402556

1403013605

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of the Mother Child Education Program (MOCEP)-a group-based early childhood development parenting education program-is to provide school-readiness and parenting skills to mothers of young children who do not have access to preschool education services. The MOCEP intervention also provides a setting in which caregivers can model pro-social behaviors and practice conflict resolution techniques directly with young children.

Full description

The purpose of the evaluation study is to rigorously evaluate the impact of MOCEP on child and parent outcomes among Palestinian refugees in Beirut, Lebanon. This evaluation employs an innovative, mixed-methods bio-behavioral approach to investigate the associations among social contexts; maternal, child and family functioning; and reduction in violence through the promotion of harmonious family relationships. The results of this study have implications for improving the lives of and reducing violence for the hundreds of thousands of families with young children living in fragile contexts. We hypothesize that when MOCEP is implemented with fidelity (i.e., delivered as intended by design), participating families will experience reduced violence in their homes and have better individual and intra-family outcomes than families who do not participate in the program.

Enrollment: 106 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 3 to 6 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion and exclusion criteria

Inclusion Criteria:

1. Child must be between 3 and 6 years of age (children age 7 may be accepted under special circumstances)
2. Mother must be able to read and write in Arabic (although skills may not be well-developed)
3. Mothers must commit to participate in the 25-week MOCEP Intervention program

Trial design

106 participants in 2 patient groups

MOCEP

Experimental group

Description:

MOCEP is implemented over a period of 25 weeks, through weekly group meetings that last approximately three hours.

Treatment:

Behavioral: MOCEP

Waitlist Control Group

Active Comparator group

Description:

For ethical reasons, no one recruited will be excluded from the opportunity to benefit from the intervention. MOCEP group will be the primary intervention group and the second group will act as the wait-listed control group. Although the families in the wait-listed control group will start out as a control group (not receiving the intervention), they will have the opportunity to participate in the intervention in a later round of implementation, after the intervention group has completed the program.

Treatment:

Behavioral: MOCEP