Trust for the Study of Adolescence

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Involving Young People in Parenting Programmes

Background

A range of statutory and voluntary parenting interventions have been developed in response to the provisions of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which enables courts to make Parenting Orders to prevent youth offending. The services that have been developed in this field have mainly focused on providing support to parents independently of interventions with their children. However, research in the US has shown that work with both parents and children can be more effective than concentrating on just one or the other.

Given these findings, a challenge faced by parenting programmes in the UK was to develop their core work with parents to involve young people . The IYPP Project was consequently designed as a small scale study to learn from the direct experience of implementing a range of models of intervention involving both parents and young people.

The Project
The overall aim of the project was to develop and test effective practice models of involving young people (10-17years) in interventions, which strengthened parenting protective factors and reduced the parenting risk factors related to the offending/anti social behaviour/truancy of young people.

The objectives of this project were:

• To develop practice models of involving young people in parenting interventions.
• To extend parenting interventions by using 5 models of involving young people.
• To evaluate and compare the effectiveness of the different models (with each other and with parent focused interventions) and their impacts on:

• young person’s offending/anti-social behaviour/truancy
• parent(s)/parenting
• parent-young person relationship
• To recommend a strategy for the replication of effective practice.
• To disseminate the findings from the research project.

Project Structure
In partnership with the Youth Justice Board, Trust for the Study of Adolescence (TSA) provided the day to day management of the project. TSA contracted with five project sites to develop and test the five models of involving young people as follows:

• Family Therapy – Luton Youth Offending Team
• Family Skills Training – Kinara Family Resource Centre,
     London
• Parallel Groups – Centre for Fun and Families, Leicester
• Family Group Conferencing – West Berkshire Yot
• Individual parallel programmes – East Berkshire Yots

Evaluation
The Policy Research Bureau (PRB), an independent research centre, coordinated and managed the evaluation element of the project.

Data was collected from young people, parents and project workers. Parents and Young people were asked to complete ‘before’ and ‘after’ questionnaires to learn about their experiences of the project. Ten parents and 8 young people were also interviewed by the PRB team. Project staff were asked to complete a questionnaire about their perception of the families experiences of being involved in the project.

A consultation event was held in October 2004 which was designed to provide feedback to parents and young people involved in the project, as well as to test the preliminary evaluation findings for consistency.

The project dissemination strategy in 2005 includes the publication on TSA’s website of a report about the project which includes material from the PRB’s evaluation as well as material from the project sites about their experience of developing this work. A conference will also be held in 2005 to focus on this area of work and to disseminate the learning from the project.

Project Funding
The Involving Young People in Parenting Programmes project was funded by the Treasury Invest to Save Budget and by the Youth Justice Board (YJB) for two years until 31 st August 2004.

Project workers
The staff working on this project were: Principal Co-ordinator Cris Hoskin, Project Administrator Lise Hansen and Project Leader Sarah Lindfield.

For further information please contact Sarah Lindfield on tel:01273 647330 or e-mail: slindfield@tsa.uk.com

 

September 2005