Parenting Programmes' Alliance

Why Parenting Matters – May 2022

Leandra Box — Thu, 05 May 2022 10:10:37 +0000

The post Why Parenting Matters – May 2022 appeared first on Parenting Programmes' Alliance.

Bridging the Gap – December 2021

admin — Wed, 01 Dec 2021 16:35:21 +0000

by Approachable Parenting

“Why do you need a special parenting programme for Muslims, there are already loads of programmes that people can attend?”
“Surely you are encouraging separatism by having a programme just for Muslims? How is that helping with integration?”
“We are concerned that you are converting Muslim parents to Islam”

So, what is a team of professionals who have written a parenting programme for Muslim families going to do when faced with these criticisms from other professionals? Thankfully we had a deep conviction and our research findings which demonstrate the necessity of our ‘5 Pillars of Parenting’ programme, and now some 14 years later are still delivering that and many other programmes to Muslim families of all backgrounds as well as to non-Muslim families. By bridging the gap, we found that parents wanted a programme that was identifiable and consistent with their beliefs and culture.

Our conviction at Approachable Parenting was driven by the anecdotal evidence from conversations with families and also from our research suggesting that evidence-based parenting programmes that are not culturally adapted can often struggle to recruit and retain parents from marginalised groups (Davis et al, 2012). Furthermore, Barlow (1999) found poor engagement with black and minority ethnic communities as well as high attrition to be risk factors when cultural factors are not considered in the programme. We knew that parents wanted a programme relevant to them and that being culturally sensitive would be a safe space for them to share their experiences.

Our work with Muslim families reflects the UNICEF Standards for Early Childhood Development Parenting Programmes, launched in 2017, in which standard 6 recommend ‘adapt to context and culture and build upon positive parenting practices’.

So where are we now?

We still have parents who thank us for running a programme that is relevant to them and their family, who found other programmes didn’t work, or simply didn’t even want to try a generic one. The first standard of the UK National Occupational Standards 2011 recommends to ‘engage with parents to build and maintain effective supportive and empowering relationships’. People want to be heard and their feelings validated – and a key way to do that is to recognise that families are different and to work with that rather than assuming a one size fits all will work for everyone.

It is so fulfilling to work with and empower families who hadn’t been able to get support from elsewhere and to enable a positive impact. Through lockdown, we changed our way of working to be online through WhatsApp groups, workshops and parenting courses. Whereas previously we were worried people wouldn’t engage this new way of working, however, to the contrary, it has enabled us to educate and support thousands of families across the U.K. We have found that we are still bridging the gap by enabling mums and dads to attend our programmes, some who couldn’t attend face to face because of work and/or family commitments or restrictions, were now able to gain support. We are looking forward to listening, engaging with more parents and continuing to respond to the needs of the minority ethnic communities as we move forward.

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PPA Nurture Blog – November 2021

admin — Wed, 03 Nov 2021 14:31:22 +0000

Reflections on Nurturing Care

Tia had 12-month old Kieran on her lap. She was focused on the tricky task of getting his padded blue coat on. She guided his fingers through the sleeves and shifted him onto her other hip to zip him up. She chatted with him about what they had just done and what was happening next. It was just one of those everyday interactions, those – let’s face it often boring – tasks that you have to do as a Mum. But caught up in it she didn’t see that Kieran had his eyes fixed on her the whole time. We paused the video, she could see how he followed her every move and kept gazing at her even when his position was shifted. “See how he is looking at you!” I said, “He is so focused on you!.. How does that make you feel?” She paused and quietly reflected “I didn’t realise that he was so interested in me”.

In 2017, UNICEF launched Standards for Early Childhood Development Parenting Programmes. The opening paragraph states that “parenting can be understood as interactions, behaviours, emotions, knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and practices associated with the provision of nurturing care”. The first standard encourages programme creators to “support nurturing care because it contributes to holistic child development”. But what does nurturing care look like in practice and how can programmes influence parents’ interactions with their children, improve relationships and enhance development?

Nurturing care is a catch-all term that describes the emotionally supportive and responsive environment that parents create to enable learning, healthy development and protect their child from threats. Parents who are attentive, warm and affectionate and take time to interact with their child are supporting them to feel secure, safe and loved. This requires that parents are able to be responsive and tune into their child’s world helping them to feel connected and understood, thus strengthening the relationship. It also requires that they have the ‘head space’ to be able to do this and that they themselves have a stable environment. There are a number of pressures that will impact a parent’s ability to provide ‘good enough’ nurturing care. Parents who themselves had poor relationships with their carers in early childhood will find it harder to make good relationships with their partners, services and children. In addition, parental conflict, poor mental health, substance abuse and the impact of poverty can all influence the wellbeing of the parent-child relationship.

In 2011, UK focused Work with Parents National Occupational Standards (Standard 8) encourages parenting practitioners to “enable parents to improve the effectiveness of the parent-child relationship”. In order to improve the effectiveness of the parent-child relationship, parenting programmes will respond in a variety of different ways.

Mellow Parenting takes a strengths-based approach seeking to identify and build on the capacities of the parent, helping them to notice what is going well and reflect on what they would like to change. We aim to create a safe, non-judgemental and secure group that helps build trust and confidence. Video feedback is a very effective tool that helps us to look at real-life interactions between the parent and child. Our observation system gives us a framework for understanding interactions and providing strengths-based feedback. We are interested in the intentions and motivations of the parent. Practitioners learn how to support parents to think about behaviours and the effect they have on their children. We aim to maintain a curious stance and recognise that in order to feel understood, parents have to trust that we are trying to see things from their point of view. A typical video feedback session will last around 45 minutes. We spend time with the parent in an individual setting looking at the interaction in detail supporting them to notice moments where they were playful, encouraging, followed the child’s lead or supported them to learn a new skill, make a choice or gain some independence. We also consider how the parent seeks to mop up a child’s distress and helps them to regulate their emotions.

“For all relationships…the message is this: Don’t be afraid to disagree. Make mistakes. Stomp around. Allow the turbulence to happen. But figure out a way to repair and reconnect, to find your way through.” – Dr. Ed Tronick

There is no perfect parent and we all make mistakes, in fact, in order to build healthy relationships, it is important as Ed Tronick (famous for the still face experiment) reminds us to consider the power of discord and allow rupture and repair to occur *.

Building relationships is not a one-way process. Babies enter the world with their own personalities and temperaments bringing their unique capacity to capture their parent’s attention. If nurturing care is what the infant’s brain expects and depends upon, then supporting parents like Tia to see that their child is interested and wants a relationship with them might just be a step in the right direction.

Rachel Tainsh
Mellow Parenting August 2021

*The Power of Discord, Ed Tronick and Claudia M Gold (2020), Scribe.

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General Introduction on UNICEF Standards for Early Childhood Development Parenting Programmes – November 2021

admin — Tue, 02 Nov 2021 17:14:10 +0000

“I feel really guilty that I can’t do more. The families need so much support. I try to tell myself that it’s not my fault. It’s Covid and the cuts.”

Imagine if, as a Family Support Practitioner, at the end of a year in which vulnerable families could be “visited” only virtually via a screen, when emotional discussions were truncated by signal failure, when play activities were presented remotely over WhatsApp instead of being shared head to head on the rug, imagine that you received a report on your year’s work which declared that, despite these limitations, your work had met the UNICEF Standards for Early Childhood Development Parenting Programmes. What difference would that make to you?

The UNICEF Standards for Early Childhood Development Parenting Programmes are based on the recognition that, “Amidst the many influences on child development, parents are critical to children’s development, adjustment and success.”

Our hope at Parents As First Teachers is that this breadth of context will validate the practitioners and encourage them in their continuing commitment to families and children.

Here are a few examples of our comments on this year’s reports –

In Standard 3, “It is recommended that parenting programmes start as early as possible…… The extent and severity of problems in later life linked with early deprivations can be remediated through early interventions”. 44% of the children supported last year by your Parents As First Teachers practitioners were aged less than 1 year, and 53% of the families were first-time parents, near the start of their parenting journey, so you clearly met this standard.

Standard 5 states, “Programmes should make it clear that a father’s positive involvement directly benefits children”. Your team successfully involved 73% of fathers in the personal visits, plainly fulfilling this standard.

Despite the huge challenges of retaining family engagement, during the pandemic, your staff delivered 50 personal visits, using a combination of face to face, video and phone approaches, exemplifying Standard 8, which concludes, “The workforce and service providers are key to the success of a parenting programme. They are the ones who deliver the programme and work in direct contact with the targeted parents and caregivers, their children, families and communities. Their work should be recognised and acknowledged appropriately”.

Bringing the standards to life and using them as part of feedback certainly encourages practitioners and can also reassure funders. One supervisor sent our comments up the line to their Council’s Media Officer who quickly issued a positive press report. Cue civic smiles all around.

In future blog posts, members of the Parenting Programmes Alliance hope to illuminate specific standards and show how they are exemplified within our range of programmes.

– Janice Saunders, Parents as First Teachers

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What we have learnt about delivering parenting programmes in the time of Covid-19 – February 2021

admin — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 12:00:28 +0000

Introduction

The Parenting Programmes’ Alliance represents a diverse group of organisations from across the UK delivering parenting programmes and support to over 20,000 people in total. Like other organisations, the impact of Covid-19 on our day to day work has been immense. With much of our work delivered in person, in groups and/or one-to-one, and sometimes through home visiting, all of that support had to stop overnight and be reconfigured to deliver virtually, whether through online webinars, videos, chats or just an old fashioned phone call with a family, many of whom were already vulnerable and dealing with complex issues. The sector has worried about how the families we support will cope with the extra stresses and pressures that the pandemic brought with it, not to mention the longer-term impact it may have had on relationships, child development or employment. Many of us support families who are already struggling in one way or another, whether that’s due to poverty, relationship breakdown, behavioural issues or mental health.

Transferring offline to online

Firstly, we had to work out how to transfer offline workshops and support into virtual, digital or online service delivery. This has included making courses and modules shorter, adapting materials so that you can show something online. There were also questions of how and whether staff or volunteers could be supported to deliver from their own homes. We have to consider their own situation, do they have enough space and the privacy to do this? Are there too many people using the internet in their house so that the connection is slow? There have been lots of things to consider, as well as the emotional pressures of working in this way which we will look at later.

For some of us, this has also meant looking at new online platforms to use so that we can deliver our services, understanding how they work in terms of privacy and security, and upskilling our workforce. It has also meant looking at our business case and funding – asking if we can afford to invest in this area without raising funds for it, and asking can we afford not to?

We have had to think about the consequences of moving services online and what that means for the future. While responding to the current needs and changes in society, how do we also protect our face to face work (which we believe to be better in most cases) so that we can safeguard that work rather than commissioning moving to prefer online delivery in the future?

Mostly, however, we have found that running programmes online is better than not running them. Families have been hugely appreciative of the support and the opportunity to connect with others.

Privacy

Staff and volunteers need to consider their own privacy when setting up and delivering groups and privacy is also a significant problem for many families. Finding a quiet, undisturbed space in a family home is often challenging and for many, it is impossible for others not to hear at least some of what is being said. This can limit or even make impossible real engagement with a group or one to one support. For group work, maintaining the confidentiality and other group rules can be difficult, affecting not just the participant who experiences privacy issues in their home, but making it difficult to protect others in the group who are disclosing information, or give them the confidence that they can speak openly.

Safeguarding issues

Possibly most importantly, we’ve had to identify how the safeguarding of vulnerable children and adults at risk could be ensured as organisations and programmes transfer to telephone, online or other forms of remote delivery. Concerns relate to whether professionals supporting vulnerable families would be able to pick up signs and signals of risk as they would when in the same room and find ways to ensure service users have a safe and private space to engage, of particular importance for those affected by domestic abuse. Organisations are sharing their new tools, guidance and training provided to their staff and volunteers to support them to adapt their practice, pick up safeguarding flags and follow existing or adapted processes to follow up any concerns.

Technology issues

Lack of or outdated technology, and limited access to the data required, have also been identified as one of the potential barriers to virtual delivery. As mentioned, you need a good internet connection and a decent laptop (and IT skills) to deliver an online webinar or workshop. Staff need good equipment to be able to spend most of their time supporting people online.

We have also supported people who aren’t used to accessing online resources, such as an online course. They may struggle to navigate the sign-up process and logging in, retaining passwords and sometimes require a lot of extra support from our staff.

We also have to consider data protection and information security issues when deciding which platforms are appropriate for the virtual delivery of one-to-one support and/or group work. Organisations are learning from each other’s assessment of the risks, and the actions are taken to mitigate them.

The families who wish to engage in support and services also need access to appropriate technology and connectivity and this has sometimes been a barrier. Some families struggle with lack of data or poor internet access and shortage of laptops or phones when the whole family is suddenly reliant on being online to live their daily lives. We are also aware that in some circumstances, there are families who just don’t have access to the technology to be able to receive support, and for families where English is not their first language or there are literacy issues, accessing online services is even harder.

Accessibility

One positive consequence of moving workshops and programmes online has been that people from more rural areas have been able to access programmes and services that would otherwise have been too far away. It has also brought people together from different areas of the country and this in itself can be an enlightening and positive experience. For some organisations, this is true also for the staff and volunteers who have been able to meet colleagues virtually who they would not usually have been able to meet in person. Physical barriers have been broken down and it no longer matters where in the country you are based. For some organisations, this has also meant an increase in the number of people attending our programmes or courses.

Our members have highlighted examples where engagement has increased during the lockdown, for example, fewer cancellations and a greater readiness of service users, and some men, in particular, to engage in deeper, more therapeutic support when not sitting face-to-face.

However, we’re very aware of the potential adverse impact of Covid-19 in exacerbating inequalities in general across the whole population and specifically in relation to access to parenting programmes and other sources of services and support. The group will continue to work together to share their approaches to addressing these issues, including those excluded from new ways of working due to lack of access to technology, barriers around language, disability and other factors that increase inequalities.

Supporting our staff - working patterns and wellbeing

While we all strive to keep supporting the parents and families we work with, we have also all been aware of the increased pressure on our staff and volunteers as they adjust to often huge changes in the way they are doing their work. Working from home has its own stresses if you have a busy household, not enough space for a desk, or constant interruptions. But all that can be exacerbated if you are trying to support a family which is really struggling, perhaps affected by illness or death due to Covid-19, issues around domestic abuse or a family finding it hard to make ends meet due to unemployment or furloughing. If you’re sitting in your own kitchen or bedroom trying to support a family, it’s so much harder to make the separation between work and home.

We are worried about the physical impact of more screen time, and the risks of burnout as people find it harder to make that separation between work and home life, to leave work outside the home and to switch off at the end of the day.

Some staff have realised how much they needed the time spent travelling between appointments or to and from groups to provide some space to mentally prepare or to process what’s happened. It’s been important to try to create that same space before and after sessions.

Organisations are working to develop specific guidance to ensure that the health and safety of staff and volunteers are protected as they move to virtual service delivery. This includes working practices, such as the boundaries around working hours and frequency of contact, and more practical considerations, such as work-station assessment, and the group will work together to develop and share good practice as it develops.

Positives: Learning for future delivery

Although restrictions are still in place, we hope to be able to return to delivering at least some of our workshops and programmes in person once more, albeit with the relevant precautions and restrictions in place. We are keen to learn what we can from the experience of delivering digitally and build on the positive consequences we’ve identified. For example, retaining increased levels of engagement of those less likely or able to access face-to-face support and services.

Conclusion

We are most concerned about the longer-term impact of Covid-19 on children and families, the spike in demand for all services after lockdowns and, specifically, for the future of family support. Yes, we need to get through the immediate crisis, but we need to ensure the support is still there for families – for those whose needs and vulnerabilities have been exacerbated by the pandemic and those for whom Covid-19 has brought new and significant challenges. More support and services will be needed as more families face the longer-term impacts of Covid-19 and the lockdown on family relationships, children’s mental wellbeing, education and behaviour as well as the practical issues for families around income, employment, housing and debt. Continuing to provide some support online will be helpful for some families but it could never replace the face to face and group support that can provide so much more and often leads to profound change.

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