Assessing the Feasibility of Providing a Family Skills Intervention "Strong Families" for Families in the Philippines.

The Strong Families Programme was introduced by UNODC in the Philippines in 2018 through the training of facilitators. Twenty-six participants trained in the program from different cities and municipalities. Afterward, Caloocan, Marikina, Palawan, Pasig, and Quezon City Local Government Units (LGUs) started to train more facilitators to allow them to pilot the program in their communities. Eventually, these cities and municipalities managed to engage families to benefit from the Strong Families Programme. The current study aims to explore the feasibility, effectiveness and acceptability of this universal prevention program with families in the Philippines, and the feasibility of delivering the program. The primary objective will be to test the effectiveness of the Strong Families program in improving family skills outcomes and caregiver and child mental health, as reported by caregivers, when implemented in the Philippines. The secondary objective will be to calculate the extent of family's attendance of Strong Families sessions, to evaluate completeness of program delivery. The tertiary objective will be to explore the cultural and contextual acceptability of the Strong Families program for families in the Philippines. A two-arm feasibility Randomized Controlled Trial with two arms: 1) Implementation of Strong Families (Intervention Group) and 2) Wait list/Control (Services-as-usual). This trial will have an embedded process evaluation. This study will take place in five locations in the Philippines. The implementation usually happens at the Barangay Level (The smallest administrative division in the Philippines and is the native Filipino term for a village, district, or ward)