Viva’s Cutting Edge: How can we Strengthen Families?
“It was in that home that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man.” - Matthew Ling
How can we strengthen families? Summary
Family strengthening is a critical element of any initiative aiming to bring sustainable change for children. Pastor Matthew Ling gave an address about the importance of family-based discipleship, emphasising the family as being the heart of God’s design for nurturing children’s faith. In a plenary session and workshop, another key element of the family, economic well-being, was explored, with presenters giving an overview of practical strategies for helping families, used in Uganda, both in refugee camps and in the city. The benefits of a Parenting App for building capacity in families were also explored in a plenary and workshop.
Family: the heart of God’s design from the start (Speaker presentation)
Pastor Matthew Ling emphasised that the family home has always occupied a vital part of the unfolding of God's plan: from the beginning, families were to multiply God's image and reflect His character throughout the earth. For example, Noah and Abraham were chosen to play roles in God’s plan and were expected to ensure their household followed the way of the Lord. Later, as the people of Israel were on the verge of entering the promised land, God laid a success strategy for conquering the land; that they needed to not only “Love the Lord our God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” but also to “Impress them on your children … Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up hiding as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.” Pastor Matthew explained that when the time came for God to send Jesus as the Saviour of the world, He did this via the home of Joseph and Mary, and it was in that home that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and man. Apostle Paul points to the home as a key part of the ecosystem for making strong disciples in Ephesians 5 and 6, where we read about how a spiritual life is developed: “It is in the home where we develop the capacity to love unconditionally and sacrificially in marriage, as parent and child and master and employee.”
He noted that discipleship involves three parties: the Holy Spirit, the church community, and the disciple maker or disciple makers: “These all come together through a discipleship process to help us grow to love others more and more like Christ at home, in church, and in the world.” However, though the church plays a role through Sunday school or other children’s ministry, “the Bible tells us that believing parents are the primary disciple-makers. God entrusted parents with the primary responsibility of the children's spiritual care … No other institution, including the church, can replicate (the home) with the same depth or consistency.” Proximity is one reason why the home is the ideal place for children’s discipleship, as parents can share physical and emotional closeness with children, offering countless teachable moments, whereas a church faces structural, programme, and time constraints. Justin Bacchus and Christian Smith in an article entitled ‘A Report on American Catholic Religious Parenting’ note: “Parents represent not simply an influence on the development of children's religious world views, but an arch influence over all their efforts and religious formation can overcome the many culture currents which flow in a direction of the secular.” Pastor Mattew ended with an exhortation that each participant should not “forget their homes because these form a critical part of the ecosystem God designed for us to achieve success in the dreams that we are all pursuing.”
Economic strengthening: critical for children’s wellbeing
The plenary session explored practical strategies for strengthening families through positive parenting and economic empowerment, emphasising holistic approaches and community involvement. Dr Susan Greener opened by addressing the root cause of vulnerability: “We all know that underlying most of the risks for children is poverty.” She explained how poverty impacts children’s development, particularly in early years: “Children are most harmed from 0 to 5 … brain growth occurs most in the first three years of life.” Poverty leads to stress, depression, and harsh discipline among parents, increasing risks of exploitation. To mitigate this, Susan highlighted microfinance and savings-led approaches to reduce household stress and improve caregiver capacity: “It’s hard to parent well when you’re so stressed, all you can think about is how you’re going to feed your child or meet basic needs.”
Differentiating punishment and discipline
Carol Talima shared insights from CRANE in Uganda, which focuses on positive parenting training and community engagement. She noted the persistence of corporal punishment despite legal prohibitions: “Corporal punishment is very common, and it’s rampant in our communities … however much there is a law against it.” Through brainstorming sessions and sensitisation, parents learn the difference between punishment and discipline, and children share how harsh discipline affects them. She also described economic strengthening initiatives, such as savings groups and income-generating projects, which empower parents and foster community cohesion: “By mid-year or end of year, people have already improved their lives … they are able to take their children to school.”
Communities together for children
Santa Lamunu provided a perspective from refugee settlements in Uganda, where families face extreme challenges. She underscored the complexity of these households, including child-headed homes and foster care arrangements: “These are families that have crossed international borders as a result of war … it calls upon the community and stakeholders to take critical interventions.” Training on positive parenting is now a cornerstone of all their interventions, with Santa highlighting the importance of collaboration and monitoring: “Community involvement from the onset brings ownership in the strengthening process.”
Changing entrenched practices (workshop)
In the workshop, Carol Talima shared more about community-based approaches from Uganda, focusing on mentoring programmes, trauma-informed parenting seminars, and church-based interventions. She highlighted the challenge of changing entrenched practices: “It’s not very quick, it hasn’t been easy … you’ll find parents insisting that they still punish their children the way they feel like.” Strategies include quoting legal frameworks, sharing testimonies, and using community radio to spread positive parenting messages. Carol described efforts to engage fathers, who are “turning up in big numbers, which is a good sign.”
Santa Lamunu provided more insights from refugee contexts, stressing that positive parenting remains essential even in crisis: “From the onset, that is a bare minimum that we do not leave out … it is a gradual achievement that is always registered over time.”
Susan Greener concluded by linking economic empowerment to overall parenting capacity, “to lessen financial stress creates capacity for parents to engage in other kinds of interventions.” Noting that there are times that handouts may be unavoidable – for example, in crisis or refugee situations – the ideal will always be to give capacity to the family leader to provide for their home. “If you do economic empowerment, it gives confidence, it makes a parent more likely to believe in themselves … it is a change that puts the solutions in the household. It also gives agency to a parent as well: ‘I can do something positive. I can make a difference. I can change the way I engage with my kids.’ So it's about identity, it's about self-concept, it's about attitude, all these things together.”
Support is available through the Parent App (Workshop)
In a separate session focused on Parenting for Lifelong Health’s (PLH) innovative Parent App, Cathryn Wood noted that positive parenting focuses on “building positive relationships, improving parent-child interactions, guiding children through positive behaviour, through encouragement, teaching and understanding, rather than relying on punishment or criticism, and particularly avoiding violent discipline.” She highlighted the global challenge that over one billion children face adverse childhood experiences due to violence, poverty, and inequality. The Parent App is a free mobile application that delivers evidence-based curricula covering skills such as one-on-one time, positive reinforcement, consistent routines, stress reduction, and non-violent discipline. It also includes modules on sexual violence prevention, teaching parents how to keep their children safe online and offline. “Parent App gives parents the support they need, the skills that work, and trusted advice they can count on so they can protect their children from harm.” PLH’s evidence base includes 15 randomised control trials across 11 countries, demonstrating strong results: a 45% reduction in violence against children in South Africa, 40% improvement in caregiver mental health in Thailand, and 57% reduction in sexual violence against girls in Tanzania. As such, “by learning through play, stress reduction, and equitable partner relationships, our solutions help to reduce violence against children and women, improve parent and child mental health and physical health, and support child learning and development outcomes. Ultimately, this breaks the intergenerational cycle of violence.” PLH aims to reach 50 million families within 15 years.
Significant impact is possible
Lori Markle, Chief of Solutions at Parenting for Lifelong Health, expanded more about the digital tools they have developed with support from the Global Parenting Initiative, Lego Foundation, and University of Oxford, which have reduced the delivery cost of training from $120 per family to less than $1. The Parent App provides evidence-based parenting curricula which can be adapted locally per culture and language, and “all of the modules incorporate mindfulness techniques and playful learning activities for users to practice at home.” The Parent Text chatbot delivers the same content via platforms like WhatsApp and Telegram, tailored to each user’s needs. After various trials and versions, the chatbot now delivers a five-day core course on positive parenting to earn a parenting certificate, then opens up other resources. PLH creates content tailored to context and is constantly innovating and using AI to widen accessibility, particularly for parents with low literacy. In a South African trial, 15,000 parents were recruited via Facebook, with 50% of participants continuing the programme for five days. Although official results are still being produced, PLH know the App has had “significant impact for positive parenting, gender equitable behaviours, parent-child communication, parent supportive learning, improved discipline behaviours, reductions in maltreatment, child and adolescent externalising problems in parental depression ... So five days, 77 cents and no human support at all.” There is also a Facilitator App, linking content on the Parent App and Parent Text to help them follow up with parents who are struggling. Other resources include a Parenting in Crisis Toolkit, a Localisation Toolkit and Public Resources, all with Creative Commons licensing and available for public use.
Trauma-informed care and the role of AI in caring for children are topics covered in another session.
These sessions were from a Cutting Edge conference in July 2025, organised by Viva, an international charity that inspires, equips and connects networks of churches and community-based organisations to work together to make a bigger, better and longer-lasting impact in the lives of children. For more information about Viva or Cutting Edge, please visit viva.org.