Involving Young People in Parenting Programmes
SECTION 4
Session 3: Involving/Consulting with Parents
and Young People
This theme was raised as part of the discussions in the multi-site project meetings on working with diversity and engagement. The session to address this issue took the form of a workshop to explore and share project workers’ experiences.
One of the main concerns of site staff was that consultation and/or involving both parents and young people can be tokenistic if not addressed adequately. The box below shows some tips provided by site staff.
Tips for consulting/involving families
Parents – Parents who have completed an intervention can be engaged as mentors for new service users. This is particularly useful at the initial stages of engagement with prospective families and to maintain engagement during the intervention (especially during holiday periods) and to relieve any specific anxieties of families. Other examples are parents acting as co-facilitators in awareness raising and training of other professionals and as a resource for parents’ support groups established after the programme has ended.
Young People – Similarly, young people, who have completed a programme, accompanied staff to initial visits to families to help with the initial engagement process with the family’s agreement in advance. One project site involved young people on the interview panel for the posts available for the IYPP Project.
Focus Groups – Both parents and young people can be invited to take part in focus groups – separately and together. Focus groups can be used to help to plan services and to review and evaluate services for families. For example, by helping to design evaluation questionnaires by highlighting what were the important elements of the process and programme for them.
Promotion – Both parents and young people can be the best advertisement for services for families. They can take part in meetings, project launches, conferences and local events. Alternatively, both parents and young people can help to design and devise promotional products such as leaflets and videos.
When planning to involve or consult with parents, young people or both, there are some issues to consider:
- Be sensitive about where and how you involve parents and young people to ensure it is an affirming experience for them
- Don’t overuse willing participants
- Use incentives as a way of rewarding the use of their time and their experience
- Ensure the language you use is not full of jargon and is readily understandable
- Let parents and young people know what will be done with what has been learned from them
- Show how you have put into practice what you have learnt
- Acknowledge when any changes you make have come from your learning from families