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Evaluating Community-Based Parenting Programmes: TOPSE

Summary of the impact

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.

Submitting Institution

University of Hertfordshire

Unit of Assessment

Allied Health Professions, Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology

Reducing child anti-social behaviour through effective parenting interventions: international impact on policy, practitioners and families

Summary of the impact

Frances Gardner and her team in Oxford have been studying antisocial behaviour in children for two decades. This programme of research has been instrumental in demonstrating that parenting programmes are effective in significantly reducing antisocial behaviour, thus encouraging uptake of these programmes by bodies that play a major role in forming UK central government policy relating to parenting and child behaviour, such as NICE and the (then) Department of Children, Schools and Families (DCSF). Given that lifetime costs of antisocial behaviour are so high, these interventions are likely to produce high return on investment, with cost-benefit analyses (e.g. NICE; DCSF) suggesting that over £200,000 per child could be saved. The impact of Gardner's studies has subsequently expanded beyond the UK, contributing to family intervention development in US trials, and to policy change by organisations such as WHO and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), and by policymakers in New Zealand, Malta, Slovenia, Estonia and South Africa.

Submitting Institution

University of Oxford

Unit of Assessment

Social Work and Social Policy

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Studies In Human Society: Policy and Administration
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology

Evaluation of a parenting programme (FAST) leads to national roll-out

Summary of the impact

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.

Submitting Institution

Middlesex University

Unit of Assessment

Social Work and Social Policy

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology

Post-separation parenting - informing and enhancing policy and practice

Summary of the impact

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.

Submitting Institution

University of Exeter

Unit of Assessment

Law

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology
Law and Legal Studies: Law

Preventive interventions for vulnerable mothers offered in pregnancy

Summary of the impact

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.

Submitting Institution

Birkbeck College

Unit of Assessment

Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Public Health and Health Services

New Forest, New Approaches: Providing the Evidence Base for Advances in the Psychological Treatment of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Summary of the impact

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.

Submitting Institution

University of Southampton

Unit of Assessment

Psychology, Psychiatry and Neuroscience

Summary Impact Type

Societal

Research Subject Area(s)

Medical and Health Sciences: Clinical Sciences, Public Health and Health Services
Psychology and Cognitive Sciences: Psychology

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