NEW ACADEMY TO IMPROVE PARENTING SUPPORT FOR PARENTS FACING CHALLENGES

The Family and Parenting Institute, with King's College and Parenting UK, have won the £30m grant from the Department for Education and Skills to provide a new Academy for parenting practitioners.

The new National Academy for Parenting Practitioners (NAPP) will launch in October 2007. It will be a centre of excellence, providing training for those who support parents in the community; and research on what methods work to support parents.

The Academy will deliver

  • A National Training Centre to galvanise training and the training infrastructure
  • An internationally renowned Research Centre
  • A cutting-edge Centre for Knowledge Transfer and Policy Development

Mary MacLeod, Chief Executive, Family and Parenting Institute, from the winning consortium, said: 'This is the next step in offering parents the right help at the right time as they raise their children. Since FPI launched in 1999, parents have told us they want tailored advice based on evidence and research when they face challenges in raising their children. So we are delighted to be working with King's and Parenting UK to make sure the Academy will do the best job possible to inform and train those who work with parents'.

Why is the Academy important?

Parents and parenting have a profound impact on children's outcomes. Children tend to do well when parents have good relationships with them, have expectations of their behaviour, set boundaries and help them develop their own capacity to regulate their behaviour, have aspirations for them, believe in their ability to succeed and show it. Conversely, children's development can be held back and inhibited when parents are unable to offer their children these strong foundations, leading to disrespectful, antisocial behaviour, poor educational attainment and social exclusion.

What difference will the Academy make?

The Academy will aim to equip England's parenting workforce with a top quality research and knowledge base. The day-to-day points of encounter with parents, such as schools, children's centres, health centres, surgeries and hospitals, day nurseries and other child care providers will be sources of expert information and signposting. Services for parents with difficulties will be able to call on quality staff who can deploy evidence-based interventions and can deploy a range of techniques for parents to draw upon in their parenting practice. The Academy will have a national footprint which will build on existing national structures managed by partners and an international reputation as a renowned centre of expertise.

Lessons from research

  • The level of practitioner skill matters
  • Research shows that parenting interventions can deliver positive effects for children, which endured 18 months later (Scott, Spender et al 2001; Scott 2006). But the level of practitioner skill was key – the most poorly skilled practitioners were coming close to actually making the children worse (Scott, Carby and Rendu 2006).
  • Early intervention saves money
  • The costs of social exclusion in these children were large when followed up to adulthood - ten times well behaved ones by age 28 (Scott, Knapp et al 2001). Thus with programmes costing £1,000-£2,000 per child, even modest effectiveness saves considerable sums.

More information

DfES NAPP website

Media enquiries: please contact Michael Scanlan at Family and Parenting Institute on 0207 424 3463

Last updated: 29th October 2007 at 12:10:24