The demise of David Cameron’s premiership in 2016 marked a significant turning point in government strategy on support for parents. Cameron had pledged to publish a Life Chances Strategy containing plans for a national parenting support offer. But his departure from Downing Street resulted in the strategy never being published. Since then, government policy on parenting programmes has been scant, with the most significant initiative being the development of the Reducing Parental Conflict programme in 2018.
What hasn’t changed over the past five years is the need for parenting support. Figures from Public Health England show that at the age of two, 17 per cent of children have not hit the expected milestones for personal, social and emotional development, with that gap growing to 28 per cent by the age of five. This should not be surprising considering a quarter of children are born into home environments that are not conducive to good parenting because the household is affected by domestic violence, mental illness or substance problems.
Dysfunctional relationships put families under strain. Analysis by the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) has illustrated the impact that a breakdown in parental relationships is likely to have on the child. The EIF’s research shows parents embroiled in difficult relationships are typically more aggressive toward their children and less responsive to their needs.
This can be an indicator of neglect or a precursor to more severe abuse which make up the bulk of children in need referrals to council social care services (see graphics).
Children who experience maltreatment are more likely to become aggressive and hostile themselves or develop low self-esteem, anxiety and depression. It also reduces their academic performance and limits the development of their social and emotional skills. In the worst-case scenarios, the family unit disintegrates so much that social workers need to intervene.
The Social Mobility Commission calculated that a third of the variation in children’s GCSE performance could also be put down to developmental problems experienced in the first five years of life. It is why the focus of parenting support has tended to be on interventions with pre-school age children. However, increasingly parenting programmes have been developed to support families with older children.
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Research evidence:
In England, parenting programmes have become an established feature of the social policy landscape, popular with governments across the political spectrum. They are typically delivered to groups of parents in weekly sessions that focus on maintaining positive relationships with children and managing their behaviour. Some programmes are recommended as an intervention to reduce child maltreatment and abuse (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, 2017), and a review for the Early Intervention Foundation identified 23 such programmes that have “good evidence” of positive outcomes for parents and children (Asmusson, Waddell, Molloy, & Chowdry, 2017).
The following three studies have been sourced from the library of the University of East Anglia’s Centre for Research on Children and Families. The studies assess three key themes for practice linked to parenting programmes: engaging fathers in parenting support; proving the short- and long-term benefits of participation in schemes; and the thorny issue of how to demonstrate the cost effectiveness of programmes.
- Making Fathers Relevant: How Practitioners Include Both Parents in Talk About Parenting Programmes
- Enhancing Outcomes of Low-Intensity Parenting Groups Through Sufficient Exemplar Training: A Randomized Control Trial
- The Cost-Effectiveness of UK Parenting Programmes for Preventing Children’s Behaviour Problems – A Review of the Evidence
Practice examples:
