Parenting Support

The Government is providing a range of support and opportunities for parents - through Local Authorities, and in partnership with the Third and Private sector.

The Government is asking local authorities to:

• Develop a strategic and joined-up approach to the design and delivery of parenting support services, ideally through a parenting support strategy that informs the CYPP and takes account of parents’ views.

• See support for parents as a continuum, from early intervention and preventative services through to the use of enforcement measures where appropriate.

• Identify a single commissioner of parenting support services, and commission parenting programmes that are evidence based, drawing on relevant guidance and the Commissioning toolkit

• The Children’s Plan: Building brighter futures, launched in December 2007 announced that £34 million would be allocated over the next three years to provide two expert parenting advisors in every local authority. The experts will provide support to parents of children and young people involved in or at risk of anti social behaviour. See The Children’s Plan on the DCSF website.

• Following the Government’s Family at Risk Review a new Government initiative called ‘Think Family’ was developed to achieve better outcomes for families at the most risk. ‘Think Family’ approaches were first tested in 15 pathfinder areas and are now being rolled out nationally. ‘Think Family' is an integral part of delivering a continuum of services and means reforming systems and services provided for vulnerable children, young people and adults to ensure services work together to:
• Identify families at risk to provide support at the earliest opportunity;
• Meet the full range of needs within each family they are supporting or working with;
• Strengthen the ability of family members to provide care and support to each other

• All authorities need to deliver a range of services that meet the continuum of needs that families might experience. This includes the delivery of multi-agency universal services, the availability of early intervention and preventative services and targeted services for parents experiencing significant problems. The services funded through the Think Family Grant should be joined up both in terms of planning and delivery, fully involving children’s centres, schools and their extended services and associated funding streams 

Funding 
• The Think Family grant is a dedicated ringfenced grant availablefor every local authority to fund parenting and family support programmes. For more information please see www.dcsf.gov.uk/ecm/thinkfamilygrant/. The grant comprises funding for: 
- Think Family Reforms & Youth Crime Family Intervention Projects;
- the continuation/expansion of the Parenting Early Intervention Programme (PEIPswhich was announced in the Youth Task Force Action Plan; 
- Parenting Experts;
- Family Pathfinders & Extended Pathfinders for Young Carers (Participating LAs only);
- Respect Parenting Practitioners (Participating LAs only);
- Anti-social Behaviour Family Intervention Project (Participating LAs only)
- Child Poverty Family Intervention Project (Participating LAs only)

Government Office for London

GOL’s key functions on the parenting agenda are to:

• Communicate national policy within the region
• Bring together Parenting Commissioners to share ideas and learn from others
• Feedback to central teams on progress and best practice within the region
• Work with DCSF; National Academy for Parent Practitioners to support Parenting Commissioners in the development and implementation of Parenting strategies
• Join up policy with the wider Every Child Matters and Respect agenda in the region

Government Office for London commissioned the Parenting Outcomes Framework for London to help local authorities focus on the impact and outcomes of parenting support activity delivered through borough strategies. The outcomes framework uses existing performance measuring tools, to demonstrate the contribution parenting support is making to achieving existing targets and indicators and supports decisions about future investment in commissioning, decommissioning and performance management of parenting strategies. It provides signposts to performance and evaluation tools which will help to adopt a more systematic and rigorous approach to investment, and contribute to a clearer picture of what has worked well, with particular groups of parents. 

Improvement Support Partners

• The National Academy for Parenting Practitioners (NAPP) was established in November 2007 to train and support the practitioners that parents turn to for advice, training and information around parenting skills so that they can make sure their work is based on research evidence of what really works.  Further information is available on the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners website.

• Following a successful two-year pilot programme involving 20 local authorities, the parent support adviser (PSA) role has been expanded nationally. The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) funds school-based parent support advisers (PSAs), as outlined in the Children's Plan. The Department has invested a total of £102.5 million between 2008 and 2011. This forms part of the school funding settlement and is routed through the extended schools sustainability strand of the Standards Fund allocation. The Training and Development Agency offers a range of support to schools and local authorities to help them develop a PSA workforce. Further information is available on the Training and Development Agency website.

• Part of the early success of programmes such as Family Intervention Projects and the Parenting Early Intervention Programme was due to the hands on implementation support provided to Local Authorities by the DCSF Families Delivery Team. This team is made up of a small group of expert practitioners with experience of setting up and running these programme who are available to provide practical advice on delivery. This team has now been significantly expanded to support the accelerated roll-out of these services over the next 18 months to every area.

The role of the dedicated regional leads is to offer specialist advice and support to assist local authorities develop and manage the authority’s Think Family services, including Parenting Practitioners and Experts, the Parenting Early Intervention Programme and Family Intervention Projects in line with the Think Family Grant terms and conditions.