CYP(3) PAP 29
Children and Young People Committee
Inquiry into Parenting Action Plan
Response From NCH Cymru
NCH Cymru’s Submission to National Assembly for Wales Children and Young People’s Committee Inquiry into Parenting Action Plan
NCH Cymru provides services to 13,000 vulnerable children and young people in Wales in 127 services run out of 54 project bases in 21 out of the 22 local authority areas. NCH Cymru provides services to more children and young people in Wales than any other children's charity and currently 65% of our services provide support to families.
Our evidence is arranged under the three elements of the inquiry’s terms of reference:
Delivery of the Parenting Action Plan (2005-2008)
NCH Cymru welcomed the Welsh Assembly Government’s Parenting Action Plan (PAP) and feel that it has been successful in raising awareness about parenting. The PAP, together with Flying Start, we believe has increased the quantity of services provided to support parents in Wales. NCH Cymru also welcomes and supports the Welsh Assembly Government’s stance on reforming the legislation on physical punishment of children, together with its approach to promote positive parenting.
However many of the action points in the PAP have not been achieved. A fundamental problem was that the PAP was not fully resourced. Resourcing of the PAP we believe was to be a mixture of UK and Assembly Government funds, which also included Cymorth funding (which is owned and distributed by local Children and Young People’s Partnerships in pursuit of local priorities).
Action Point 1 (bilingual helpline) NCH Cymru feels that a well publicised bilingual free helpline, providing evidence based advice and information is needed. NCH Cymru in partnership with Parentline Plus has submitted a proposal for the delivery of the bilingual telephone helpline to the Assembly Government. We understand that this proposal is how the Assembly Government wish to develop this service; however we also understand the proposal has not been implemented because of being unable to release UK funding for the revenue costs.
Action Point 2 (booklets). Booklets have been developed and distributed via schools and health visitors. Our staff, working in communities, are not aware of them at present which may point to problems with distribution. NCH Cymru also feels that booklets are not the most effective way of supporting vulnerable families who may have low literacy skills or whose lives are chaotic.
Action Point 3 (Grandparents) The recommendations from this working group have not been implemented. In our experience grandparents who provide care while parents work do not fit easily into mainstream parenting services. Grandparents are also targeted to become full time carers through SSD policies of family based care which can result in loss of friends, support networks and they may be in need of both practical and emotional support.
Action Point 4 (Incredible Years Parenting Programme)
We are not aware of a SCIE report on evidence based programmes but the Welsh Assembly Government paid for professionals from different areas to be trained to deliver the Incredible Years Programme (IYP). This is an evidence based programme that achieves good outcomes with many parents and the Assembly Government funded training has resulted in increasing the roll out of Incredible Years to parents across Wales. However it is a very expensive parenting programme (in terms of funds for training and supervising facilitators, resources to be provided to parents and in terms of staff preparation time.) A further problem is that those who have been trained to deliver IYP have not always gone on to deliver; many have not been released from their other responsibilities to enable them to deliver IYP.
Our experience in counties such as Denbighshire, Carmarthenshire, Powys, the Vale of Glamorgan and Neath Port Talbot is that the Incredible Years Programme does not meet the need of all parents, particularly the 'hard to reach’. 'Hard to reach’ parents need self esteem/ confidence work undertaken prior to being able to take part in an IYP and follow up and drop in support is needed to maintain improvements. For example in Neath Port Talbot we do an extensive amount of work on developing parents’ confidence, using Future Training’s 'Self Esteem Programme’, prior to delivering IYP. Additionally the IYP is not sufficiently flexible, the visual materials need updating and there are heavy resource implications.
Our staff also report (this is backed up by research) that 'hard to reach’ parents are more willing to engage with us as a voluntary sector organisation than social workers; parenting support delivered by statutory agencies is often too stigmatising. Providing support to parents in local community and family centre settings is also de-stigmatising.
Staff in NCH Cymru deliver a range of parenting programmes and other interventions to parents tailored to their needs and feel strongly that a menu of interventions are needed to meet different needs. Other Parenting Programmes that work in our experience are Handling Children’s Behaviour, Living with Teenagers, Family Links Nurturing Programme, the Solihull Approach (which promotes emotionally sensitive parenting), Parenting Positively, Future Training’s Self Esteem Programme and Coping with Young Children. But parenting support is not just about parenting programmes; some parents need the support of a family centre/ drop in service with at times specific advice, whilst others need higher tier interventions such as therapeutic support delivered by staff trained and experienced in working with families therapeutically.
A further concern of NCH Cymru is that the drive for only delivering parenting programmes with a robust evidence base (in particular Flying Start) is stifling creative and innovative practice. We feel that professionals need to be able to develop programmes based on their knowledge and experience. For example in one of our Family Centres in Caerphilly they have developed a group called ' Focus on families- The teenage years’ which retains the behavioural focus of an NCH parenting programme but blends it with a systemic and relationship focus which has achieved positive results. NCH Cymru feels that professionals should have the freedom to be able to develop new programmes and be able to use their judgement to tailor and adapt programmes and approaches to meet the individual needs of the families with whom they work.
Action Points 5, 6, 7 and 9 (Parent Participation)
Action Point 6 (practice guide) was achieved as Jayne Isaac, previously NCH Cymru, was seconded to undertake the task. Action points 5,7 and 9 were to be implemented by Framework Partnerships and LEA/Schools. In our experience, implementation has been inconsistent and patchy. Action Points 5 and 7 have only been delivered where there has been commitment by Framework Partnerships to establish an effective Parents Networks, such as Caerphilly and Cardiff. Establishing a Parents Network requires funding to be provided and an element of independence.
Local Co-ordination of Parenting
Cymorth guidance to C&YP Framework Partnerships was amended and it was expected that some funding would be used for parenting. However the way C&YP Framework Partnerships implemented this aspect of the guidance varied widely. The inherent problem is that supporting parents is something that staff from many agencies do- doctors, health visitors, teachers, nursery staff, EWO’s, social workers, community workers, Sure Start and Flying Start are but some. Some C&YP Framework Partnerships brought staff from different agencies together to identify what each did, where there was overlap and to develop a local parenting strategy.
In our experience better results have been achieved when a parenting strategy has been developed that incorporates a range of universal and targeted family support services, multi-disciplinary working and when both mainstream and Cymorth funding have been used to implement the Parenting Strategy. Funding was often used to employ a parenting co-ordinator and support staff to work across the agencies. For example Carmarthenshire FACT services (managed by NCH Cymru), provides support to parents across Carmarthenshire and the NCH FACT Project Manager also leads the multi-agency parenting strategy and implementation group in Carmarthenshire. Carmarthenshire also should be praised for ensuring that Flying Start Parenting is also delivered from the same team so that the experience of the team has been built upon and used to optimum advantage. The result is that Parenting Services are well co-ordinated across Carmarthenshire.
The findings from the On Track evaluation (D. Ghate et al (2008) DCSF: On Track Phase Two National Evaluation: Reducing Risk and Increasing Resilience- How Did On Track Work?) also provides further evidence that support to parents is effective when a range of universal and targeted services are provided to meet the individual needs of the parents and children. On Track provided a range of universal and targeted home- school partnership, parent support/ training and school based services. 'The most strikingly positive results were found at the level of families, and specifically, in relation to parenting factors’ and 'the ability to work in a cross- disciplinary way with families was an important factor in successfully meeting their needs. Perhaps the biggest 'added value’ of multiple service use came from the multiple intervention use with families, where both children and their parents were accessing On Track services’
Welsh Assembly’s Current Work
Since the Parenting Action Plan expired in March 2008, there does not appear to be any plans for further work.
What works and what doesn’t work?
A weakness of the Parenting Action Plan was that it was focussed on just parenting programmes (in particular IYP), booklets and parent participation. NCH Cymru feels that a range of universal and targeted interventions delivered in a cross-disciplinary and co-ordinated way and tailored to meet the needs of individual families is what works best. (See comments above)
What action needs to be taken to move the agenda forward?
NCH Cymru feels that the Welsh Assembly Government should formally review the Action Plan 05-08 and develop a National Parenting Strategy to further develop parenting work across Wales. Within the strategy it will be necessary to define and clarify the difference between 'parenting’ and 'family support’ and identify resources to fund the implementation of the Strategy.
There are now many resources to support parents of pre-school children. However parents of teenagers in Wales are only likely to receive support if their children offend. There are few or no services to support parents of primary age children, parents of teenagers and young parents; these gaps need to be addressed.
Children and Young People’s Partnerships should be required to:
develop a local Parenting or Family Support Strategy to co-ordinate and improve support to parents. Support to parents provided by health, education and social services staff together with Flying Start and Sure Start should be integral to the strategy
the strategy should deliver a range of universal and targeted services to support parents, of which parenting programmes are just a part
fund a Parenting Co-ordinator and staff to deliver support to parents
establish a Parents Network in each local area.
As detailed in the introduction, NCH Cymru manages many projects that provide support to parents across Wales and would be happy to provide further evidence. We would be able to support parents and young people who use our projects to provide oral evidence to the Committee or alternatively be happy to arrange a visit(s) for the Committee to our projects.
