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Parenting

Introduction

Positive and responsible parenting is a priority for Haringey, there is compelling evidence that parenting has a major impact on a child’s life chances. Strong and affectionate relationships with parents, praise and recognition, and parental interest and involvement in education are linked to better outcomes for children (see footnote 1).

Ensuring that all children are brought up experiencing warmth, love and encouragement within safe boundaries is far harder for parents who live in the stressful conditions found in the Borough (see footnote 1).

Children raised in poverty do less well than children raised in more favourable circumstances on a range of measures of attainment and quality of life. Yet if children are brought up with warm, firm encouraging parenting, the evidence is clear that they can succeed even in these more adverse circumstances (see footnote 2).

The Borough needs to deliver a range of Parenting Programmes and interventions to support our families and ensure the best outcomes for our children.

Details on maternity, safeguarding children, children and young people's mental health and teenage pregnancy can be found in other sections.

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Key Issues and gaps

Achieving a coordinated range of parenting support and programmes, that provide for different levels of need for families across the Borough. For many families, not having appropriate support through community based services leave their children with poor behaviour and communication skills which then becomes a problem in the first years at school. Without the right range of support and services for parents, many teenagers can be influenced into not attending school, getting involved in a range of ant-social behaviours.

“We have found overwhelming evidence that children’s life chances are most heavily predicated on their development in the first five years of life. It is family background, parental education, good parenting and the opportunities for learning and development in those crucial years that together matter more to children than money, in determining whether their potential is realised in adult life.” Frank Field, Independent Report on Poverty and Life Chances (December 2010).

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Who is at risk and why

Haringey is one of the most deprived local authorities in the country, ranking 13 out of 326 English authorities (2007). The domains where Haringey ranks the most deprived are barriers to housing and services, crime and income.
The population’s transience is growing and many of our parents and families who make contact with services have poor mental health, drug and alcohol problems, suffer from domestic violence and live in poor housing.
The factors contributing to parents experiencing difficulties in parenting are complex but poverty, control and optimism about one’s life chances, parental mental health, maternal depression, experience of domestic violence and lack of local family and community support are key factors (see footnote 3).

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The level of need in the population

The level of need in the Borough can be identified through the number of Common Assessments (CAFs) completed, children subject to Child in Need Plans, Child Protection plans and attendance at our schools.
Haringey’s Children’s Social Care received 2,393 referrals during year 2010/2011. As a Borough we have over 290 children and young people subject to Child Protection Plans and a further 500 children and young people who have a statutory social work involvement as a ‘child in need’. Professionals carried out 916 CAFs with parents where their children had additional needs and over 89% received a service, over 20% being speech, language and communication services.
Over 1,200 children and young people have a Statement of Special educational Needs as at 31 December 2011.
Haringey’s Youth Offending service (YOS) had 280 statutory clients with 290 statutory interventions as 31 December 2011.

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Current services in relation to need

Family Support and parenting programmes are being delivered by a range of professionals in Child and Adolescent Health Services (CAMHS), Education Psychology (EP), Family Intervention project (FIP), Children’s Centres and our schools.
Whittington Health (Haringey and Islington Community Services) is currently an Early Implementer Site for Health Visiting. This is a more intensive model of health visiting with more support at the beginning for new parents and parents to be; and an emphasis on parenting, attachment and developing relationships. There is a growing body of evidence that supports the delivery of early support, prevention work and intervention with families to deliver better long-term outcomes for children. The key drivers supporting this evidence are recent reports by Frank Field (see footnote 4), Graham Allen (see footnote 5), Eileen Munro (see footnote 6) and Claire Tickell (see footnote 7).
The Family intervention project has built on the use of evidence based parenting intervention programmes with the introduction of an enhanced component that enables families to access on going support with implementation. A wide range of programmes are delivered within an integrated approach.
A range of practitioners from the Borough’s Youth Offending Service, Family Support Service, Children’s Centres and Social Care are trained in the Triple P Programme.
Child Adolescent Mental Health Services deliver courses in Webster Stratton. (Webster-Stratton is a programme for parents of children aged 3-8 years with behaviour problems. The programme looks at the foundations of successful parenting, focusing on playing with children to help facilitate a better relationship, praising to encourage good behaviour and motivating children to behave better. The course also deals with setting boundaries and teaching children how to problem-solve.)

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Service users and carers opinion

Evidence based programmes such as ‘Strengthening Families Strengthening Communities’ and Webster Stratton with families always get positive evaluation and feedback from attendees.

“I benefited most out of this course, with listening to my children’s opinions more, praising them, ignoring bad behaviour. Its made me look at how I talk to my children and how they respond to me.”

“I listen to people more and I have more patience in listening to my children, I take on peoples opinions more and am able to converse and respond in a more positive manner”

“Thank you to Fip for giving us this opportunity to improve ourselves and realise the problems on ourselves, and teaching us and showing us the way to get out of problems we are in. Thank you again for all your help”

“Positive changes are: more calm and positive around my children, I go out more and I’m more confident. I can’t believe I kept up with it and I enjoyed making friend and hope we stay friends.”

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Expert opinion and evidence base

Programmes evaluated and ranked in Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) Commissioning Toolkit.

The CWDC have produced a Commissioning Toolkit that is aimed at those involved in the commissioning of services for parents and families and provides detailed information about each programme's aims, content, target groups and training requirements. Most importantly, it provides information about programmes' quality and effectiveness, enabling commissioners to make informed choices about how suitable a programme is for meeting the needs of specific groups of parents - Department of Education (external link).

The Healthy Child Programme: Pregnancy and the first five years of life (external link) highlights that effective implementation of the Healthy Child Programme should lead to strong parent–child attachment and positive parenting, resulting in better social and emotional wellbeing among children. Evidenced based parenting programmes are identified in the Healthy Child Programme.

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Projected service use in 3-5 years and 5-10 years

At targeted and specialist level up to 100 places per year and anticipate this will increase by at least 60-80 a year over the next 5 years.

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Unmet needs and service gaps

The borough needs to have a range of Parenting Programmes and Family Support as part of a range of integrated interventions.
The borough needs to have accessible programmes and support for all members of our communities, particularly where English is not families’ first language.

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Recommendations for Commissioning

The borough needs to deliver a consistent approach at all levels of need from: Information, involvement and opportunity, support for parents, interventions with families through to statutory interventions.
In keeping with the priorities identified in the Health and Wellbeing Strategy, parenting support programmes need to be targeted at parents with children under 5 years.

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Recommendations for further needs assessments

Ongoing engagement with parents across all services to ensure feedback is embedded and linking to other programmes where there is active engagement with families.

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