Incredible Years Wales:
The Welsh Centre for Promoting
the Incredible Years Programmes
Title:
“Engaging hard to reach families”
Presented
by: Caroline
White, Clinical Psychologist, Central Manchester & Manchester Children's
University Hospitals NHS Trust.
Abstract:
In Manchester, the Incredible Years BASIC Parent Programme
was initially piloted in a deprived part of Salford, as the Little Hulton
Project (White, Agnew & Verduyn, 2002). This was a two year funded project
providing a community based clinical psychology service to pre-school children
and their families. The positive outcomes led to successful mainstreaming
and formed the basis of a multi-agency bid, involving Early Years, Educational
Psychology, and the voluntary sector Family Service Unit, to provide Incredible
Years (IY) parent groups to parents of pre-school children citywide across
the culturally diverse population of Manchester - the Children & Parents
Service (CAPS). Provision of groups takes place in nurseries and outcomes
are evaluated. Mainstream funding was secured after three years and over the
past six years links have developed with the twelve Sure Start services in
Manchester, providing an increase in resources and a comprehensive parent
group network.
Further funding provides a training resource team aiming to deliver effective
IY parent groups to parents of children aged 5-8 years. The team provides
accredited training with ongoing support and supervision to frontline workers
committed to delivering parent groups in their own school or agency. It is
this development, which enables parents, within the hardest to reach populations
(e.g. ethnic minority groups, travelling families, drug using parents in rehabilitation),
to access effective parent groups, with successful outcomes. The development
of a Parents' Forum has led to further user involvement and parents themselves
are involved in recruitment and delivering groups. This service too is now
provided through mainstream funding.
The early intervention developments in Manchester (White & Verduyn, in
press) will be presented with a specific focus on identifying the key elements
to service delivery, which help to remove the numerous barriers, which frequently
get in the way of parents accessing parent courses. This will provide a framework
for exploring ways to overcome obstacles such as stigma, language, cultural
differences, disabilities and mental health difficulties. The role of user
involvement and the Parents' Forum will be presented as successful factors
for engaging families into the service.