Children, parents or parenting where do our interests lie

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Children, parents or parenting where do our
interests lie?

• Dr Karen Whittaker
• Senior Lecturer
• University of Central Lancashire

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Introduction

• Consider why children matter
• What we mean by parents and parenting
• Research
• Consider where interests should be focused

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• We can and should try to fix families and we do
  often succeed. Parenting and family support can
  be very effective. However, we should not persist
  where experience tells us that the prospects of
  success are bleak.
• Martin Narey, Chief Executive Barnardos (2009)

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Where do interests lie?

• The people
• Children?
• Parents?
• The activities tasks involved in raising
  children
• Parenting?
• Combination?

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The primacy of childhood

• Early life experiences
• sensitive periods
• Social psychological development
• Brain development
• Nurturing practices
• Emotional attachments
• Cognitive abilities
• Self-control
• Biological development

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based on Bronfenbrenners (1979) model of social
ecology
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Influencing childhood

• Parents
• Nurturing relationships
• Role models
• Secure attachments
• Supervision monitoring
• Education involvement
• Importance of
• Fathering (Flouri and Buchanan 2003 Cowan et al
  2009)
• Co-parenting (Magnuson and Berger 2009)

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Support for parents parenting

• Parents
• Transition to parenthood (Shultz et al 2006)
• Young motherhood (Olds 2006)
• Enhanced health visiting (Wiggins et al 2005)
• Peer support (Johnson et al 1993 Oakley et al
  1998)
• Financial packages for working parents
• Sure Start Childrens Centres

• Parenting
• Parenting training programmes
• Behaviourally focused programmes
• Webster Stratton Incredible years
• Triple P Positive Parenting Series
• Relationship focused programmes
• Family Links

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The Study

• Explore the functioning of a Positive Parenting
  Programme and influences on parental
  self-efficacy
• Realistic evaluation
• Concerned with what worked for whom and in what
  circumstances
• How do parenting services work - for whom and in
  what circumstances

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Study Involved

• Survey of 168 people
• 18 cases
• accessing or withdrawing from a variety of
  facilities

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Key findings

• The service was made of many different components
• There were sessions that supported
• Parents e.g. teenagers group, Dads group
• Parents children e.g. parent toddler sessions,
  story time
• Parenting e.g. positive parenting course

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Personal world with informal systems
Find out Get there Be there Stay there Move on
or move out
Parent-child group
Positive parenting course
Home visiting
Course for parents
Community events/activities
Parenting Service
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• Support for parents sessions enabled access to
  support for parenting course
• I mean, the first session that I attended at the
  parent child group, that was baby massage, and I
  started talking to a few girls there, and one of
  the girls was already at the parenting class so
  was telling me (Navinda)
• Well I met midwife at young persons drop-in.
  I was a bit down with my boyfriend and she said
  come to the group. She took me the first time.
  (Frances)

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• Support for parents contact helped relationship
  development and information sharing
• . And I got so upset about that, and I rang up
  my health visitor because I didn't want it to go
  any further, like for me to do anything, and she
  got me help, things like that. . coz I was
  frightened of doing something .. coz she health
  visitor said do you want me to get Social
  Services? I said no. She said right, we'll
  do it a different way then, and did. She got me
  a psychiatric nurse and got me own psychiatric
  nurse. She got me Home-Start which I have every
  Monday. I've still got her. (Kim)

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• Support for Parenting course also
• provided support for parents
• ...by going to the positive parenting course,
  they got to know me and so they told me about the
  holistic health course after, which got me into
  the parent's forum and from that I've done
  allsorts really, like the child protection
  awareness. These were things for me, time for me
  (Anna)
• we're sharing and saying oh this is what I do
  with my children, why don't you try that? And
  getting different ideas and things like that.
  (Barbara)
• I enjoyed the time out it was great to be able to
  go back and talk about things. it was easier to
  keep it up because you had the group to go back
  to, the report back to get support from. (Belinda)

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• Support for parents can be the means to support
  parenting means of engaging, enabling access,
  encouraging continued use and guidance with
  moving-on

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Tiers of support for varying need
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• Support for parenting in the absence of
  support for parents results in support that is
  vacuous as it neglects the reality of childrens
  lives

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Testing cases

• Doncaster torture case
• 10 and 12 year old children attack two other
  children
• Baby Peter case
• Mother was neglectful, failed to protect and
  colluded.
• Maternal experience of childhood neglect and the
  care system
• Practitioners missing opportunities to protect
• Shannon Matthews Kidnap case
• Police describe mother as pure evil

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• we should not persist where experience tells
  us that the prospects of success are bleak.
• However in the absence of offering support for
  parents how can we gain sufficient experience?

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To conclude

• Supporting parents matters to children
• Should be universally available
• It influences the conditions for parenting and
  thereby childhood.
• Patterns of behaving are learnt in childhood and
  carried forward into adulthood.
• Then they are acted out with the next generation
  of children

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References

• Cowan, P. A., Cowan, C. P., Pruett, M., Pruett,
  K., Wong, J. (Aug. 2009). Promoting fathers
  engagement with children Preventive
  interventions for low-income families. Journal of
  Marriage and the Family. Vol. 71(3) 663-679.
• Johnson Z, Howell F, Molloy B (1993) Community
  mothers' programme randomised controlled trial
  of non-professional intervention in parenting.
  British Medical Journal 306(6890) 1449-1452.
• Magnuson K, Berger LM (2009) Family Structure
  States and Transitions Associations With
  Children's Well-Being During Middle Childhood.
  Journal of Marriage and Family 71(3) 575-591.
• Olds, D. (2006) The Nurse Family Partnership An
  Evidenced Based Preventive Intervention. Infant
  Mental Health Journal, Vol. 27(1), 525.
• Oakley A, Rajan L, Turner H (1998) Evaluating
  parent support initiatives lessons from two case
  studies. Health Social Care in the Community
  6(5) 318-330.
• Schulz, Cowan, and Cowan, 2005, Promoting Healthy
  Beginnings A Randomized Controlled Trial of a
  Preventive Intervention to Preserve Marital
  Quality During the Transition to Parenthood. JCCP
  Vol. 74, No. 1, 2031
• Wiggins et al (2005) Postnatal support for
  mothers living in disadvantaged inner city areas
  a randomised controlled trial JECH Vol. 59,
  288-295.