Research 

Learning Brief 6, May 

‘Ilifa Labantwana is a national Early Childhood Development Programme in South Africa. Ilifa Labantwana is concerned with the design and testing of scalable integrated and affordable ECD models which can be taken forward to ensure that all children in South Africa have access to the services they need to develop to their full potential. It is within this context that Ilifa funded five organisations to test what they believed would be workable models in the context in which they were working. What emerged was a community of practice known as the Sobambisana (Help each other) Initiative. The Sobambisana Initiative was carried out over a four year period and tracked by a robust research process focusing on monitoring and evaluation the models being implemented. Based on this research, a series of five learning briefs has been published, this is the sixth in the series. It focuses specifically on what emerged from the research about the role and impact of parents/ caregivers on the growth and development of their young children.’ [p. 2]