The way parents nurture babies and toddlers is among the most decisive factors for healthy child development. Modelling good hygiene, encouraging healthy eating, talking, singing, gently calming children when they are upset – interactions like these are critical to early brain development. Unfortunately, many children do not get the kind of nurturing and support they need.

Sometimes the problem is that parents don’t know what they should be doing or may copy what they see in their own family or community, even if this is not the best thing for their children. In other cases the problem may be that parents are too short of money, time or energy to parent the way they themselves would like. Perhaps they are struggling with depression, domestic violence, exhaustion, hunger or illness. A common mistake in these cases is to give parents information when they don’t have the time or mental space to use it, or in a way that feels threatening or judgemental.

Parents+ (ParentsPlus) addresses these problems by bundling opportunities for parents to learn more about child development with existing services that already work to improve the family’s overall well-being. Our aim is to accelerate the spread of good practice in this ‘bundling’ approach by developing further evidence about which bundles are most effective and demonstrating their potential to work at scale through a set of strategic partnerships.

In the coming years, the Foundation will focus on:

• Developing evidence for effective Parents+ bundles by supporting demonstration projects and evaluations
• Establishing strategic partnerships with government, business, international organizations and other foundations to scale proven Parents+ bundles
• Cataloguing and promoting examples of effective Parents+ bundles being used around the world