Incredible Years Irish Conference 19th May 2008

Welcome to our Incredible Years (IY) Wales web site with information about our work to promote and research the IY parent child and teacher programmes. These programmes are more and more in evidence across Wales. Since its opening in 2003, the work of the IY Wales Centre has grown and grown. We hold an Annual Conference and run regular training in delivering the IY parent child and teacher programmes. We also maintain an active research programme and publish regularly. In 2006 we produced a DVD of parents speaking about the parent programme. Of particular importance is our work with the Welsh Assembly Government as part of their Parenting Action Plan for Wales, who have funded training across Wales in delivering the parent programme until at least March 2008.

Our research activity continues to flourish under Tracey’s leadership. Our research, replicating Carolyn’s early intervention study, with our partners in eleven Sure Start Services in North and Mid Wales, and Oswestry has produced excellent results that have been shown to last. Our work has also received a lot of attention in England and been cited in the Social Exclusion Action Plan, published in September 2006 by the Prime Minister’s Strategy Unit. This makes specific mention of our work, which was also mentioned in the House of Commons in December 2006 (Hansard). The Westminster Government now has six Pathfinder projects delivering the IY parent programme in Authorities across England.
 

We have established the programmes in Wales so quickly because Professor Carolyn Webster-Stratton, who founded the programmes, has helped us to develop our own training resources, making the programmes widely accessible in Wales. Our newsletters (2005/2006) describe some of these developments. The parent and child programmes are being delivered as early intervention preventive programmes, as universal programmes (for example the Gwynedd Classroom Dinosaur School programme) and as therapeutic interventions in Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services for referred children and families. We have continued to train people to deliver the teacher classroom management programme and this too is becoming more widely available as information about the programme grows.

From our base at Bangor, we are continuing to organise training in the parent, child and teacher programmes, and provide ongoing support and advice to people. Our goal, to establish a network of certified leaders and mentors across Wales and  to enable the programmes to reach yet more children and families, is moving in the right direction

Our latest successful grant application will research the parent programme with foster carers and will be working with our partners Powys, Wrecsam and Flintshire over the coming year. Other new developments in the pipeline include the new seventeen-session programme for 8 – 12 year olds, and an infant and toddler programme. This will be published later in the year and we hope to evaluate it as part of the Flying Start initiative.