Incredible Years Wales:

The Welsh Centre for Promoting the Incredible Years Programmes

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About Us | About the Incredible Years | Who's who at the Centre | The Centre's publications | Contact us | Future events

About Us The Incredible Years Wales Centre grew out of the Bangor Child Behaviour Project which was started by Dr. Judy Hutchings, with colleagues from the North West Wales NHS Trust and the University of Wales, Bangor, in 1995. Its aim was to develop and promote evidence based interventions for children with conduct disorders and their families. Project staff have completed a number of funded research projects, all associated with children who have behaviour management problems. These include        i) a comparison of two treatments for CAMHS referred children with severe behavioural problems       ii) development and evaluation of a training programme to support health visitors in their work with the parents of pre- school children with behavioural difficulties,       iii) a project on parental problem solving and ability to describe their child’s behaviour,      iv) a number of small projects on the effect on parental mental health of support with child management, evaluation of a Sure Start service and a literature review on safe forms of restraint for children, undertaken for the Wales Assembly Government. The project built international links over the years with Prof. Robert Wahler at Tennessee, Dr. Jerry Patterson at Oregon, Prof. Matt Sanders at Queensland, Australia and Prof. Webster-Stratton at Seattle. It has brought many eminent visitors to Bangor. Dr Hutchings is part of the parenting research interest group that meets at Kings College, London, which acts as a forum for researchers throughout Britain. She speaks regularly throughout Britain and oversees about her work. She has recently served on a Committee set up to identify evidence based strategies to help young children at risk of becoming violent offenders and has contributed to the recently published report "Support from the Start". She has hosted many research and specialist placements for local students and for students from America, Canada and France. The project has produced a number of research reports and published journal articles, details of which are available from the project office. Since 2001 the project has focused its attention on disseminating and researching the evidence based Incredible Years parent, child and teacher classroom management programmes. The Incredible Years Wales Centre was established in 2003. The centre maintains an active programme of training events throughout Wales with opportunities to train in all of the Webster-Stratton programmes. It also holds an annual conference at Bangor and this year for the first time Professor Webster-Stratton is attending the conference. Dr. Hutchings is authorised by Professor Webster-Stratton as a Mentor to train people to deliver the basic parenting and therapeutic Dinosaur School programmes. She also delivers the Webster-Stratton teacher classroom management programme, both for Gwynedd and Anglesey teachers and within the Faculty of Education as part of the M.Ed. programme. We also have regular training visits from Seattle to support the classroom dinosaur school programme. We are currently engaged in a three year Health Foundation funded project evaluating the Webster-Stratton Incredible Years basic parenting programme with parents of high risk pre-school children living in 13 Sure Start designated areas across North Wales.   About the Incredible Years The Incredible Years Teacher, Parent and Child Programmes | The Incredible Years Programmes : Seattle | The Incredible Years Programmes : Wales     The Incredible Years Teacher, Parent and Child Programmes Professor Webster-Stratton, at the University of Washington, Seattle developed the Incredible Years (IY) Series over the last 30 years. It comprises three linked programmes for children, teachers, and parents. All of the programmes have been rigorously researched over the last 20 years using randomised controlled group studies and have demonstrated positive results that have been replicated by independent researchers. The accumulated research evidence has demonstrated the effectiveness of these programmes in both preventing and treating conduct problems among children aged 2-8 years and increasing their social competence. The Group BASIC Parenting Programme consists of 12-14 weekly sessions, which emphasize the importance of play, ways to help children learn, effective praise, use of incentives, limit setting and ways to deal effectively with misbehaviour. There is also an Advanced programme which focuses on adult communication skills and problem solving and a School-Aged programme which promotes home school links and helps parents to encourage childrens' academic skills. The Dina Dinosaur Social Skills and Problem-Solving Curriculum promotes social and emotional competence in children. Topics taught include: appropriate class room behaviours, friendship skills, anger management and problem solving skills, school rules and success at school. This school-based programme was developed as a two-year programme covering children’s first two years at school. The Teacher Training Programme promotes effective classroom management skills, including: use of teacher attention, praise, encouragement and use of incentives, building positive relationships with children, and how to manage difficult or inappropriate classroom behaviour. The Incredible Years Programmes : Seattle Click here to find out more about the work undertaken by Professor Webster-Stratton in Seattle, giving details on the Parenting programmes, the Child Therapeutic Dinosaur School programme, the Teacher Classroom Management Programme, their research base and training opportunites. The Incredible Years Programmes : Wales Click here to find out more about the programmes in Wales.

 

Who's Who at the Centre If you wish to contact any of the Centre's staff, click on their names to establish an e-mail link. Dr. Judy Hutchings Has worked for the NHS since 1976. She is Director of Incredible Years Wales, which has developed from the research programme that she set up in 1995 to develop services for children with behavioural difficulties. Since that time she has held a number of grants to research ways of helping these children and developed interventions within the NHS to support these children and families. Judy’s current interest is in implementing and evaluating the Incredible Years parent and child programmes, developed at the University of Washington, across North Wales. Dr. Tracey Bywater Is the Research Officer for the Centre. She came to Bangor to study for a B.Sc. in Psychology. On graduating in 1998, with a First Class Honours degree, she worked as a Research Assistant for a year investigating infant language acquisition. In 1999 she embarked on a Ph.D. attempting to link infant speech perception to phonological short-term memory, which has been shown to be predictive of later vocabulary size. Tracey has also lectured within both the Criminology and Psychology departments in the University of Wales, Bangor and has been a Group Leader for the Forensic Academic Advancement Programme for 2nd year Psychology Undergraduates. Tracey's role within the Centre is to organize and coordinate the research project. This entails; visiting parents to acquire their consent to participate in the study; carrying out measures; allocation of parents to control or intervention groups; liaising with group leaders, ethics boards, funding bodies, Sure Start, NCH, Barnardos and NHS representatives; compiling and presenting reports; inputting data and performing statistical analyses; liase with the finance office and manage the research projects' budget and finances and trouble-shooting any issues that arise through the running of the groups. Claire Davies Claire graduated with a First Class Honours Degree in Criminology at the University of Wales, Bangor in 2004. Claire joined the Centre in October 2004 as a replacement for Karen Jones, working as a part-time Research Assistant. She will be maintaining the DPICS database, liaising with parents and conducting interviews with parents. She is also undertaking an M.Sc. in Psychological Research part-time. Karen Jones Graduated in Psychology with a First Class Honours degree at the University of Wales, Bangor. She worked part-time at the Centre as a Research Assistant whilst also undertaking an M.Sc. in Psychological Research. Karen is the Centre's main coder in the Dyadic Parent-Child Interaction Coding System (DPICS). She organises and delivers training to the vastly growing coder team and provides weekly supervision. During her time at the Centre, Karen developed a trainer manual for the DPICS which is currently available in draught form, and will shortly be available in published form for purchase from the centre. Karen began her Ph.D. on the evaluation of the Incredible Years Parenting programme and its effectiveness with children diagnosed as ADHD who receive the programme as a stand-alone intervention in October 2004. She remains an integral part of the Centre, maintaining supervision and ensuring reliability within the DPICS team. Catrin Eames Graduated in Psychology at the University of Wales, Cardiff. She worked part-time as a Research Assistant for the Centre whilst also undertaking an M.Sc. in Psychological Research. During her time at the Centre, Catrin has undertaken a survey of professionals who were trained as BASIC Parenting Group Leaders, reporting positive results with regards to the training and difficulties that arise in the prevention of running a parenting group. The report was presented at the 2003 'Promoting the Incredible Years Parent, Child and Teacher Programmes in Wales' conference and is currently in preparation to be published. She is a trained DPICS coder and is involved in home observations as part of the research studys' data collection and has aided in the DPICS training, as well as conducting and training the administration of questionnaires at interview data collection points. Catrin also deals with some administrative work for the Centre which involves liaising with parents with regards to appointments, and is the Centres' web author. Catrin began her Ph.D. in October 2004, investigating the link between Implementation Fidelity of the Incredible Years Parenting Programme and child behaviour outcome. Dilys Williams Dilys Williams is our Centre Administrator and has worked for the Centre since March 2001. She is responsible for the administrative work of the Centre which includes the creating and maintaining of all administrative files pertaining to the Centre; the organisation of training courses run by the Centre to include the organisation of the rooms, catering requirements, printers and course manuals, creating the initial flyers, maintaining the attendee list, the ordering of books from both this country and America, informing attendees of course venues, times of courses and accommodation facilities and the typing and collating of handouts for each day of each course. Dilys also organises the Annual Incredible Years Wales conference, creating the initial flyer and registration forms, maintaining a record of all who wish to have more information about or participate in the conference, creating a programme for the day, gathering all abstracts from participants to be put into the programme and organising the conference proceedings to be published. The Centre's Annual Newsletter is another of Dilys' tasks. She develops the Newsletter to a high standard every year, collecting articles, setting out the newsletter and organising the printing and translation. Nicola Armstrong Nicola graduated in Psychology at the University of Wales, Bangor in 2002. She then completed an M.Sc. in Psychological Research with Distinction in 2003 and undertook an M.Sc. in Applied Behaviour Analysis and passed at cerificate level in 2004. Nicola will be joining the Centre shortly as a part-time psychology/administrative assistant and will be of support to both Dilys and the research team, undertaking observational and questionnaire measures, liasing with parents and supporting Dilys in the running of the Incredible Years Wales Centre. For any enquires regarding any aspect of the Centre, contact Dilys for further information. If you wish to do so by e-mail, simply click on Dilys' highlighted name above. If you wish to contact by post or by phone, please click here for details.