Prioritising parental support

Parents are hugely influential in helping children fulfil their potential, so it is essential they feel empowered to seek additional support when they need it.

To date, the government has taken action to make support available from birth through to teens, with the investment of £300 million into Family Hubs in 75 areas across the country.

The vision is that Family Hubs act as a 'one-stop shop' to offer support, guidance and advice on issues including breastfeeding, mental health support, health visits and parenting. With a current focus on the transition to parenthood, and supporting early language and communication to prepare them for school at the age of five.

Whilst this investment is welcomed it sits against a backdrop of significant increases in demand for services, see ADCS Safeguarding Pressures report 2022, combined with challenges around staffing and capacity. The question then is how we do more, with less staff and increasing demand.

At the CYP Now Early Help Conference last month, Helen Lincoln, executive director of children, families and education at Essex Council Council and Chair of the ADCS Policy Committee suggested we need to seriously explore digital.

She called for a National Digital Early Help service, commenting that parents routinely reach for their phones and laptops, and seek advice online from forums or influencers, and that while these can be useful resources, it is important that advice and support is evidence-based. Especially given that evidence shows high quality parenting programmes, like Triple P, can really help.

The Australian Government’s approach provides a successful blueprint for the UK to follow, having launched a nationwide roll-out of online parenting programmes last year.

It has been a resounding success, with parents and carers reporting feeling calmer, more confident, and having a better understanding of their children’s needs, and schools and wider stakeholders working to dovetail the provision into their own service offering.

We know providing early help is more effective in promoting the welfare of children than reacting later. Early help means providing support as soon as a problem emerges, at any point in a child’s life.

Early help can also prevent further problems arising in the future. Indeed, a recent study by Cambridge University shone a light on the long-term benefits of early support.

Using data from more than 10,000 families in the Millennium Cohort it found that the strength of the relationship between parents and children early in life significantly increases the child's tendency to display pro social behaviours like kindness and empathy and have fewer mental health problems in their teen years and beyond.

In order to make early help effective in the UK, it is essential that the government, local organisations, and agencies work together to identify those who would benefit from early help and guarantee they can access it.

In UK politics, the importance of parenting often slips down the agenda, despite their power to impact early development, schooling, behaviour, mental health and many other areas that contribute to the best start to life.

With the current government, prioritising long term thinking, it is important that a full online rollout of evidence-based early help parenting support is enacted, giving parents the perfect tools and support to deal with daily parenting challenges and help bolster the capacity of early help services across the country.

Matt Buttery is chief executive of Triple P UK and honorary associate professor at the University of Warwick.