Tūpuna Parenting
The Lifecourse Science
Warm, responsive parenting is a key ingredient in childhood that contributes to good lifecourse outcomes. Even small improvements in parenting skills can improve children’s lifecourse outcomes. However, it is challenging to find scalable ways to improve parenting skills.
Tūpuna Parenting's train-the-trainer model is a culturally grounded, tech-enabled approach to improving parenting, particularly for those families struggling the most. Learn more about their approach here.
Why We Invested
Tūpuna Parenting’s aim is to nurture strong, happy, and loved children by providing adults - both parents and kaimahi/ support workers - with knowledge of ancestral Māori parenting values and techniques. An independent evaluation found that, of their 180 graduates:
93% observed that whānau developed more confidence in their parenting skills, leading to reduced stress and more positive interactions with tamariki.
77.8% of graduates reported positive changes in child behaviour and well-being
Impact
A key strength of Tūpuna Parenting’s “Ngākau Aroha for Kaimahi” professional development is that it has been designed for scale.
Train-the-trainer approach: rather than going directly to whānau, Tūpuna Parenting decided to train the kaimahi (health workers, social workers) who work with whānau every day. As Tūpuna Parenting founder and CEO Elizabeth Emere Harte (Ngāpuhi and Ngāti Porou) explains: “If we get health or social welfare professionals who have an ongoing trusted relationships with whānau to share this kaupapa - they’re more likely to generate real change for whānau than a one-off programme where we fly in and fly out”
See-one-do-one: graduates of Ngākau Aroha then have the opportunity to deliver the 8-week Tūpuna Parenting Foundations wānanga to a group of whānau they support in their day jobs, co-facilitating with Tūpuna Parenting kaiako/ teachers. In Elizabeth’s words: “We think ‘see one, do one’ is good for building confidence to be able to deliver directly to whānau without us.”
Online delivery: Tūpuna Parenting have built an impressive online delivery suite, using Elizabeth’s background as a software developer. The 20-week journey is delivered through a mixture of seven online wānanga and 13 weeks of independent online learning with videos and activities on an e-learning platform. This is a cost effective platform for larger scale rollout.
Scale
How We Are Working Together
“The mātauranga we share is so important for our people and we know we need to spread it more widely. Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund is going to help us do that and we’re excited for the impact we will be able to make”
Aotearoa Lifecourse Fund is providing grant funding plus capability building to support Tūpuna Parenting in two areas:
Impact: Evaluate the effect of Ngākau Aroha on parenting and whānau relationships
Scale: Support Tūpuna Parenting to achieve their ambition to double the number of kaimahi graduating from Ngākau Aroha for Kaimahi in the next two years.