Heal-to-Grow

Heal-to-Grow is offered to Colombian ECD workers and consists of approximately 17 face-to-face sessions (approximately 120 minutes each) on socio-emotional development and mindfulness practice, supplemented by 15 virtual practice sessions (approximately 30 minutes each) and on-site facilitation (approximately 8-16 hours).
Heal-to-Grow face-to-face sessions are divided into 3 modules:
1. Emotional well-being for ECD workers: This module is about the strengthening of ECD workers' socioemotional skills through mindfulness practices.
2. Children's socioemotional strengthening: This module seeks at ways to strengthen socio-emotional development from birth and during early childhood with strategies based on mindfulness in the framework of the services provided by ECD workers at ICBF.
3. Socioemotional Family Strengthening: This module aims to provide ECD workers with tools of mindfulness as a complement to the accompaniment of families.

2023-06-05

2023-10-13

ECD Workers: Mindfulness skills; SEL - Social awareness, Self-awareness, Self-management/ Self-control, Relationship Skills and Responsible decision-making.

The outcomes of Heal to Grow surveys are categorized by the five core competencies of the CASEL framework, which stands for Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning. This framework provides a comprehensive approach to promoting social and emotional learning in schools and includes the following competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision-making.
To collect data on these socioemotional skills, a survey will be constructed based on the following instruments:
- Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ)
- Test of Regulation in and Understanding of Social Situations in Teaching (TRUST)

ECD workers: Wellbeing and Stress; and Key settings influence on initial education institutions.
Children: Social awareness - Relationship Skills - Self-management - Responsible decision making.
Caregivers: Stress and well-being, self-awareness, self-management, relationship skills, and key setting influence for Families or caregivers

To obtain these outcomes in ECD workers we have thought of including questions based on the following two instruments:
- Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale (WEMWBS).
- Teacher Subjective Wellbeing Questionnaire (TSWQ).

To obtain the outcomes in children, another questionnaire based on the following instruments would be used:
- International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA).
- Escala Abreviada de Desarrollo - 3 (EAD-3) - Ministerio de Salud de Colombia.
- Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ).
- Ages & Stages Questionnaires: Social-Emotional section.

To obtain the outcomes in caregivers, another questionnaire based on the following instruments would be used:
- Parental Stress Scale (PSS)
- Parenting Stress Inventory Short Form (PSI-4-SF)
- Self-Compassion Scale (SCS)
- Social-Emotional Assessment/ Evaluation Measure (SEAM™), Research Edition - Caregivers Form

The proposed evaluation is a cluster randomized control trial (cRCT) where clusters are defined as the Units of Services (UDSs). On the recruitment phase, the objective is to receive excess demand for program enrollment: approximately 700 interested UDS in participating in Heal to Grow (in contrast to their actual implementation capacity of approximately 210 UDS). Given this excess demand, treatment randomization will be performed after the inscription stage and before the definition of the logistics of the groups; all ECD workers belonging to the same UDS will be assigned to the same group.

This group of 700 UDS will be randomly assigned into three groups: treatment, control, and replacement. The UDS selected into the treatment group will receive Heal to Grow’s training curricula, while UDS assigned to the control group will not receive any intervention. Replacement UDS will receive the training only if selected to replace a treatment UDS. Otherwise, these UDS will not receive any intervention nor be included in the study sample.

To measure the change in the socioemotional skills of ECD workers, a self-administered questionnaire based on existing tools such as the Five Facets of Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), the Test of Regulation in and Understanding of Social Situations in Teaching (TRUST) will be used, in addition to some observation tools in controlled situations. For caregivers, another self-administered questionnaire will be applied using instruments such as the Parenting Stress Inventory Short Form (PSI-4-SF). Other instruments that require direct interaction such as the International Development and Early Learning Assessment (IDELA) will be used for children. In the primary and secondary outcomes explanation section, you will find all the instruments that inspired the questionnaire.

After collecting endline information, we will estimate the impact of Heal to Grow through Intention To Treat (ITT) and Local Average Treatment Effect (LATE) estimators through an OLS regression with fixed effects and clustered standard errors at the UDS level.

Randomization done in office by a computer

Clusters: Service Units (UDSs)

Yes

700 Service Units expected to be recruited/interested and 426 between treatment and control groups

1800 ECD workers (1100 between treatment and control), 3.000 children/caregivers

213 Service Units control, 213 Service Units treatment and 274 Service Units to Replacement group.

0.35 DE in the FFMQ scale for ECD workers