Evidence-based parenting support is one of the most effective strategies that we have for improving children’s outcomes in the early years. However, challenges and barriers exist that are preventing families from disadvantaged backgrounds from accessing effective support. Stakeholders from different sectors need to work together to develop solutions to the barriers that are limiting the provision of effective support at scale. While a lot is now known about enablers for scaling parenting interventions, we currently lack coordinated action to drive implementation at a sufficiently wide scale.

On 5 November 2024, Nesta and Foundations co-hosted an event to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to develop a shared vision for scaling up effective parenting support in the UK. The event was attended by more than 80 people from England, Scotland and Wales, representing sectors including governments, funders, charities, researchers, practitioners, parenting intervention developers and early-years service providers.

The opinions expressed in this event recording are those of the speakers. For more information, view our full statement on external contributors.

We heard inspiring talks from 10 speakers (view our presentation slides and the event recording),  including:

• Sarah Cattan, Nesta (Introduction and opening remarks)
• Donna Molloy, Foundations (Why we need a national focus on effective parenting support )
• Louise Bazalgette, Nesta (What it takes to reach scale: supply-side and demand-side barriers and enablers)
• Crispin Day, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (Supply side barriers and enablers:  A provider’s perspective)
• Joanne Stewart, Blackpool Council (Demand side barriers and enablers: A commissioner’s perspective)
• Marc Rooney, Department for Education (Using the government's Opportunity Mission to drive scale-up)
• Kirsten Asmussen, Foundations (Learning from national action on evidence-use)
• Leandra Box, Race Equality Foundation (Taking account of systemic racism and inequalities in scale-up)
• Ben Lewing, Foundations and Tom Symons, Nesta (Building local infrastructure for implementation) 

In addition to the talks, we also held two roundtable discussions with attendees, focusing on the challenges and solutions for scaling parenting interventions, inviting them to share their views via Slido polls and questions. As you can see from the polling results below, national policy and funding were two challenges that attendees would most like to tackle to help parenting interventions reach a wider scale.

A number of key messages developed throughout the discussions at the event. These messages were drawn from contributions made during the presentations, roundtable discussion sessions and responses to Slido questions: 

1. Policy

• Attendees voted for a more supportive national policy to enable scaling parenting interventions as the top challenge they wanted to tackle. There was consensus that there is an urgent need to rebuild government commitment to supporting parenting. Attendees called for governments (including devolved nations) to set a clear vision for parenting support as a national priority.
• National policies for parenting support should set clear objectives while allowing for local flexibility. This would provide local authorities with the freedom to innovate and make decisions tailored to their local populations while remaining aligned with government priorities.
• To support the UK government’s policy commitment to accelerate scaling effective parenting interventions, it is important that researchers, funders, charities, parenting intervention developers and early-years service providers can articulate both the short-term ‘pay-off’ and long-term benefits of parenting support, especially benefits for disadvantaged families.

2. Funding 

• Funding for implementing parenting interventions was another top challenge that attendees wanted to tackle. They called for national governments to provide sustained and ring-fenced funding to implement and scale up evidence-based parenting interventions. 
• Successful implementation requires adequate funding for infrastructure and relationship building, funding for training and supervising the workforce, as well as funding for outreach to support parent engagement.

3. Evidence

• There was a consensus among attendees that knowing 'what works' is not enough. We need to know “what works, for whom and in what circumstances”. Evidence is needed about whether interventions are effective when delivered in real-world contexts, and how well interventions work for caregivers from different demographic groups and backgrounds. Filling these evidence gaps would require a commitment to larger-scale evaluation.
• It would be valuable for evaluators, policymakers and implementors to coordinate on key outcomes for children and families, and monitor changes of these outcomes at local and national levels. This can help us to understand how individual interventions add value to one another, and understand the long-term impacts of combining different interventions. 
• Researchers, intervention developers, commissioners, implementors, practitioners, funders, and charity organisations need to share evidence and learning with each other, and use evidence to support local implementation and adaptation.

4. Engaging families

• Intervention developers and local service providers need to build relationships with local communities and families, especially those from minoritised ethnic backgrounds and underrepresented groups. They need to better understand what families need, where they go for trusted advice, what type of support they want, and how they would like to access the support. This understanding is important for designing and choosing parenting programmes that meet local needs.
• Designing programmes with families to meet their diverse needs is crucial and should start early and continue throughout programme development and implementation. Programmes need to fit into parents’ day-to-day lives, rather than adding extra burden to them. Technology can be used to provide more responsive and personalised support to families.
• Families may be experiencing a range of issues that impact their caregiving. It is important to enable parents to support their children to thrive, so local service providers should consider peer support and local champions as ways to build trusting relationships and connect families with support.

5. Local implementation 

• Governments need to increase support for effective implementation in local areas. Space and time are needed to negotiate effective partnerships between parenting programme developers and local services who are implementing these programmes and working directly with families. 
• Local flexibility in which programmes are selected, and how they are delivered, is important to ensure they are tailored to local contexts and align with wider local strategic aims. 
• Intervention developers need the capacity to work with those who will implement the programmes. They need to understand how to best support them with troubleshooting and get the right balance between delivering the programmes with fidelity while tailoring their delivery to suit local populations of parents.
• Local implementation works best when local authorities can build capacity and buy-in for programmes, provide inclusive training, and build workforce capacity for parental outreach, community engagement and co-design, as well as capacity for accessing, generating and sharing evidence.  

6. Data 

• A better data infrastructure that supports monitoring and evaluation is needed to help the early-years sector understand the range and type of parenting interventions offered, who is accessing which support, and whether or not it’s benefiting them. Central policy coordination is required to support the sector to work together on collecting data on reach and impact at a national level.
• Local authorities need access to better infrastructure and more capacity to collect robust and real-time data for analysing local family needs, monitoring local progress, and evaluating local implementation. 
• Improved infrastructure for sharing data would facilitate stakeholders in different local authorities to build a community of practice, support collective learning, and adapt across regions.

7. Addressing inequality 

• There is a risk of exacerbating inequalities in children’s outcomes if parenting programmes are not explicitly designed to meet the needs of parents and caregivers from minoritised and disadvantaged backgrounds.
• Addressing systematic racism and inequality needs to be a priority, rather than an add-on, right from the start and at every stage of design, delivery, evaluation, and scale-up of parenting support. 
• To address inequality, it is important to deliver programmes that suit families of different needs, for example, those who speak a different language, caregivers with disabilities or neurodiverse needs, and minoritised and structurally disadvantaged communities. 
• We need to acknowledge the limitations of existing evidence, especially regarding its applicability to communities from minoritised ethnic backgrounds. Evidence-based toolkits need to reflect the diversity of communities served and we should work towards a more representative evidence base. As discussed in the key messages on evidence, it is important to understand how interventions work for caregivers from different demographic groups and backgrounds.

8. Integration with the wider system

• Interventions can't work in isolation. They need to be part of a coordinated local support offer so that the families who most need support can access it. 
• Local service providers need to understand how families navigate through the system and provide coordination when families move between different services.
• We need to have a more joined-up approach to supporting parents in local areas to avoid fragmentation and duplication of efforts. It is important that those who offer parenting support collaborate with those working in other sectors, such as health and financial support, to help parents navigate local services and improve access to effective parenting interventions.

We are grateful to everyone who attended the event and shared their perspectives on these topics. Nesta and Foundations are looking forward to continuing to build on the conversations started at this event and working closely with stakeholders from across the children’s services sector to drive forward the scale-up of effective family support in the UK.