The key lessons parenting classes must heed from previous trials
Jess Brown
Tuesday, February 2, 2016
Government must learn the lessons from its failed Can Parent programme if it goes ahead with a new voucher scheme for parenting support classes for those with young children, say early years experts.
Despite high satisfaction ratings, the government's pilot scheme of giving vouchers for parenting classes to parents of children under five was labelled a flop.
By the end of the two-year trial period from 2012 to 2014, just 2,956 parents had taken part in Can Parent, significantly lower than the 20,000 parents the Department for Education had targeted to reach. Whereas it predicted a 40 per cent take-up rate, only six per cent of those eligible participated.
Less than two years after the scheme ended, Prime Minister David Cameron has announced the government plans to look again at the potential for another voucher scheme for parenting classes as part of a £35m investment in the new Life Chances strategy to tackle child poverty.
Launching the initiative in January, Cameron said: "It will examine the possible introduction of a voucher scheme for parenting classes and recommend the best way to incentivise parents to take them up."
But in light of the poor take-up of the Can Parent scheme, many parenting and early years experts have been left wondering what has changed to justify the government launching a new voucher-based parenting support programme less than two years on.
The final report into Can Parent, commissioned by the Department for Education, summed up the main reasons for the low rate of participation.
More than a third of parents surveyed said they could not see how the classes would benefit them, while one in six said they did not have time to attend classes.
Pamela Park from Family Lives, a membership network for parenting practitioners, welcomes the new scheme, but says it is paramount that the government learns the lessons from last time.
"There is much learning from the Can Parent trial, but also from the experience of Parenting UK's members who have been delivering parenting programmes for decades," she says.
"We hope that any new proposals will build on this experience to ensure parents get the best possible support."
Overcoming the stigma
However, education consultant John Freeman says low participation of parenting programmes is down to the perceived stigma attached to them, something the new scheme will struggle to overcome.
"Any scheme that relies on targeting will face three problems," he says.
"Stigmatisation, leading to reluctance to participate; targeting will too often miss people - there is not a simple link between poverty and poor parenting; and unless the targeting is mediated by a trusted third party, it will be rejected."
He calls the resurrection of the vouchers scheme a "cheap and easy, quick fix that is unlikely to work".
He adds: "If I were offered such vouchers, my response would be denial that I needed them."
The DfE's final evaluation of Can Parent concluded that there was little evidence parents attending the classes saw them as stigmatising. However, it is questionable how representative this group was of the population as a whole.
June O'Sullivan, chief executive of London Early Years Foundation, is also concerned that the scheme will not reach those parents who would benefit most from support.
"I imagine it went wrong last time because of feeling like a bad parent if you go off to do this thing," she says.
"We definitely know from children's centre data that parenting classes have to be handled and packaged really carefully."
The DfE report recommended that the scheme needed, and lacked, "clear, sustained positive messages about universal parenting support".
However, Geoff Lindsay, director of the University of Warwick's Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research, and who has worked on an evaluation of the Can Parent programme, disagrees.
"Stigma is a concern that can be handled," he says. "You need to see it as a longer-term change to culture to make it acceptable as a part of people's understanding."
Culture change
He adds that rather than stigma, the reason for low take-up was because a lot of parents had not thought about parenting classes before. "It takes a while for this kind of culture change to take effect. Classes for people with young children is a new cultural phenomenon," he says.
In much the same way that antenatal classes have normalised pre-birth support, Lindsay hopes that vouchers will do the same for parenting classes. He suggests that professionals working with parents - including health visitors and the early years workforce - already discuss parenting skills with parents, so are well placed to spread the message about parenting classes.
"I think the message from the Prime Minister was that parenting is a skill - even if we're doing okay, all of us can learn more," he adds.
The Can Parent programme was free for parents for the first two years, before the vouchers were withdrawn.
Lindsay's research found that the number of providers halved from 12 to six after the voucher scheme ended, while the number of parents enrolled fell to just 164.
"The government was trying to develop a market of providers. But then providers dropped out, and the ones that remained didn't put on many classes," he explains.
He says the government will need to think carefully about how a voucher system would be set up, and who will fund parenting classes if, as before, they are withdrawn after an initial period.
"If the government is not supporting it, it will have to be parents paying themselves. If that's going to be the end point, it will need lots of research," he adds.
He says whether parents will be willing to eventually pay for classes is the "crunch point", and will require a lot of work to convince them of the benefits.
Sam Callan, a former adviser to David Cameron on family policy, says building on the Can Parent programme is sensible, as it represents a quality mark for universal parenting programmes developed by the sector.
"The programme got better as the evaluation progressed, so why waste all that learning?" she adds.
Callan says that one of the biggest lessons to be learned from Can Parent is the importance of delivering the right message. That is why the Prime Minister used the word "aspirational" when announcing the possible new scheme, she adds.
Sales and marketing
"This is about sales and marketing just as much as it is about policy," she explains.
"The government is on to this - it needs to get the cultural acceptability. That needs to be as much of a priority as working out the technicalities of a voucher system.
"You have to get the marketing right. It's all about culture," Callan says, adding that one way to get the message across would be to promote peer-to-peer "selling" of the programmes.
"There are so many examples of products that people thought 'we don't do that in Britain', but then goes on to become a success."
She says the government must also look at how the scheme can help those with more complex needs.
"For parents who have gone through the entry-level parenting programme, you can then find ways to help at the next level.
"If you have more specialist needs, you need to find a way of linking it with the Troubled Families programme so the universal programme is the entry (to that). You can't just tick a box that says 'family support'. You need to make sure that, if people need to go on a conveyor belt of support, once universal support has done its job, they can.
"It's about finding ways to ensure parents get the help they need. It needs cultural acceptability across the social economic spectrum."
She says the early years sector has its part to play too by "not assuming because it didn't go too well before, you can't build on that".
"I know the government is engaging the people who ran Can Parent," she says, adding that the sector must also help and build on the principles Cameron outlined in his speech.
However she says that it is no big surprise the scheme didn't do better the first time around.
"Big national strategies need two iterations," she says.
AT-A-GLANCE - GUIDE TO THE CAN PARENT PROGRAMME
- The Can Parent trial was run in two parts. The first, from 2012 to 2014, offered parents a £100 voucher to spend on parenting classes
- The second phase, from 2014 to 2015, withdrew the vouchers, but the classes continued to run
- The trial aimed to test the value of a universal offer of parenting classes to all parents of children under five
- On offer were 14 courses, across Camden in London, High Peak in Derbyshire and Middlesborough
- Nine out of 10 parents who completed their course were positive about their parenting class
- Evaluation of the scheme found that half of parents were unwilling to pay anything for parenting classes
- Take-up rate was six per cent of those eligible compared to a target of 40 per cent.