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Approximately 15% of children show significant behavioural difficulties. Research at the University of Manchester (UoM) established that delivery of evidence-based parenting information via broadcast TV changed viewers' parenting behaviour and, in turn, reduced child behavioural problems. This novel delivery method was implemented and internationally disseminated via the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. These new Triple P materials have reached an estimated 7 million families in 25 countries. This effective delivery method has also informed UK government policy and initiatives by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
From 2004, researchers at the university's Centre for Research in Primary and Community Care developed the `Tool to Measure Parenting Self-Efficacy' (TOPSE). This allowed community-based parenting support practitioners to evaluate and demonstrate, for the first time, the effectiveness of their services and providing, for example, quantifiable data to their funders. Parents too could rate the help they received, as well as their own efficacy as parents, and they subsequently reported increased confidence in their parenting ability and improved parent-child relationships. By 2008 the tool had spread nationally and internationally, and has since been used by more than 300 practitioners and researchers worldwide.
The education gap between children from poor homes and their peers is established before they start primary school. These early inequalities heavily influence children's later outcomes. FAST (Families And Schools Together), is a parenting programme that aims to reduce the educational effects of deprivation and promote family cohesion. We have carried out evaluations of the programme. As a result, the UK government and international agencies have endorsed FAST. Specifically, we carried out research that has identified strategies for effective replication of the programme across a range of disadvantaged communities in different contexts. The research underpinned Save the Children UK's decision to support the roll out of this intervention, with £7M funding from Lloyds Bank and Morrison's grocery chain. Our evaluations of the roll out demonstrate a range of impacts on beneficiaries, namely children and families: increased parental involvement in schools and increased social capital; improved parent to parent support networks, increased parent community leadership, positive child mental health outcomes and increased social skills; improved academic and school behaviour; reduced aggression and anxiety as well as reduced aggressive and delinquent behaviours after eight weeks. The beneficiaries are children, their families and schools, and society at large.
Jacqueline Barnes' evaluations of government initiatives promoting parenting and child development for vulnerable families have directly affected major policy decisions since 2008. Her study of the Home-Start programme demonstrated limited benefits of unstructured volunteer support, and informed recent NICE guidance on early intervention. Her subsequent evaluation of the Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme for vulnerable mothers changed government policy. The success of FNP, as demonstrated during the initial evaluation phase, led to ministerial decisions to more than double the provisions of this programme in 2010 and 2013. FNP has now been rolled out widely in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Three studies by Trinder have helped shape national policy and informed practice on three related issues regarding arrangements for children after parental separation. The three issues are whether or not there should be a statutory presumption of shared time, the scope and shape of education programmes for separated parents and whether additional punitive sanctions would assist with the enforcement of court orders for contact. Trinder's three studies have built a strong evidence base and have had an impact by:
1) helping to shape national policy on shared care, parent education and enforcement;
2) informing professional decision-making on shared care, parent education and enforcement;
3) stimulating public debate about shared care.
A research programme of randomised controlled trials undertaken at the University of Southampton demonstrating the efficacy of the New Forest Parenting Programme (NFPP) played a crucial role in: (i) influencing the developers of clinical guidelines to recommend parent training in general as a core part of the treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and (ii) establishing the NFPP, in particular, as a widely employed evidence-based treatment for ADHD, a condition estimated to affect up to 400,000 children in the UK alone. As a direct result of the trials, the programme, a novel therapeutic intervention that teaches parents of preschool children with ADHD how to modify their children's behaviour and improve their self-regulation, has been included in the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) and other clinical guidelines and recommended internationally as an effective alternative to medication, which often brings only short-term benefits and is associated with a range of potentially debilitating side-effects.
Since 1994, a team from the University of Reading, led by Peter Cooper, Professor (1993-) and Lynne Murray, Professor (1996-), have published extensively on postnatal depression (PND), revealing important information on the prevalence, detection rates, prediction and assessment of this disorder. Furthermore, their studies examined the impact of PND on the mother-infant relationship and child development, and the effectiveness of interventions for PND. This work has been key to clarifying the nature of PND and its clinical significance and has had a major impact on clinical care for women with PND and their babies. Specifically, the research has provided support for an increased number of health visitors in the UK, influenced UK practice guidelines, and informed training delivered directly to healthcare professionals by Cooper and Murray. Cooper and Murray have extended their UK research to work in an impoverished community in South Africa, which has given rise to community-based parenting interventions that are now being disseminated both in South Africa and beyond.
Sure Start, the flagship New Labour anti-poverty initiative launched in 1999, was an area-based early intervention targeting pockets of social and economic deprivation in England. The multi- disciplinary National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS), to which Professor Angela Anning was the central educational contributor, was the largest social science evaluation contract ever awarded in the UK. Findings were continually fed back to ministers and civil servants to inform policy and practice. Impacts (discussed below, section 4) include:
(1) systemic changes in integrated services for vulnerable families;
(2) rethinking the resourcing and funding of Children's Centres;
(3) revision of training and qualifications of early childhood staff;
(4) enhancing the role of family support and parenting projects.
Improving outcomes for children, young people and families focuses on supporting the development of health and social care initiatives to promote social inclusion and improve quality of life, family cohesion, and health outcomes for `troubled', at risk, and disadvantaged families, demonstrating the following impact:
Brunel research evaluated the first UK adaptation of an innovative American model for managing child care proceedings in court cases of parental drug and alcohol misuse. This evaluation provided the UK evidence base for the `Family Drug and Alcohol Court model' (FDAC); this has created impacts with national significance and international reach. Impacts for health and welfare for families were demonstrated through improved health and welfare outcomes such as reduced parental substance misuse, higher family reunification rates or, if required, swifter alternative placement for children; impacts for practitioners and professional services were achieved for social workers, lawyers, children's guardians and judges through the development of new understanding, enhanced inter-professional working and the delivery of more integrated practice with potential cost savings; impacts on public policy, law and services were achieved through raising political awareness, legislative debate, as well contributing to the international adoption of the model.