We want to understand what drives or impedes the successful scaling of parenting interventions in the UK. We are particularly interested in parenting interventions that target socioeconomically disadvantaged parents and that support children’s early development, between pregnancy and age five.

This project is an important stepping stone for our fairer start mission. It will inform the development of work aimed at supporting and scaling evidence-based parenting interventions, to contribute to our aim of closing the income-related outcome gap in children’s development at age five. We will publish the findings from this research to support the work of others in this field.

Nesta is working with the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) to review literature and interview key stakeholders, including those who have developed, implemented and scaled parenting interventions, and experts involved in research and policy related to scaling parenting interventions.

By understanding what drives or impedes the successful scale up of parenting interventions in the UK, we can do more effective research into scaling up effective parenting interventions. This will help us to avoid repeating mistakes of the past, and understand what actions we (and others seeking to scale parenting interventions) need to take in order to successfully scale existing or new interventions.

Our fairer start mission’s goal is to narrow the outcome gap between children growing up in disadvantage and the national average. We have a strong focus on supporting parents/carers of children aged under five. Children’s early years are a crucial period of development that lay the foundation for their later cognitive, social, emotional and health outcomes. Interventions that support families during the early years have the potential to make a significant positive difference to children’s lives and their long-term educational, employment and health outcomes.

This project will enable Nesta to learn from successfully scaled parenting interventions, and to inform the development of our own strategy for scaling parenting interventions, as well as informing the work of others working in this field.

Nesta is working with the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) to review existing research literature on the topic of scaling parenting interventions, and interviewing key stakeholders such as individuals and teams who have developed, implemented and scaled parenting interventions, and experts involved in relevant research and policy areas. We will do this by searching articles in databases using keywords to identify interventions that have been scaled.

The research will include a range of parenting interventions, such as home visiting, group-based and digital interventions. We are particularly interested in parenting interventions that target disadvantaged parents and interventions that support children’s early development, between pregnancy and age five.

We will summarise the key findings from this research, about the actions and infrastructure required to scale parenting interventions effectively, and publish these findings on our website.

Additional project work by Andras Beszterczey, Cameron Knott, Rachel Lim and Anna Bird, all from BIT.