Research on a group-based intervention that aims to help parents nuture their children’s socioemotional health during toddlerhood.
The challenge: Toddlers need lots of care and attention, but not everyone can access the support they need to help provide this.
What we’re doing about it
Incredible Years – Toddler (IY-T) aims to improve parent-infant relationships and attachment by using positive parenting strategies. The project is delivered universally in the BSB area. It is aimed at parents, grandparents and carers that have a child aged between 12-36 months. The course covers 8 key topics such as ‘social and emotional coaching’ and ‘the art of praise’. IY-T is delivered through two-hour sessions over 13 weeks by two trained group facilitators. Facilitators promote peer support and shared learning. In the BSB area, IY-T has been delivered by Barnardo’s since September 2018.
In 2021, the BSBIH undertook an evaluation to understand what has been delivered by the project and to explore parents, caregivers and group facilitator’s experiences.
Findings
A total of 202 parents and caregivers took part in the course with 110 completing IY-T. On average, parents and caregivers attended 7 of the 13 sessions. During the pandemic, IY-T facilitators supported families in creative ways, providing practical support while bringing in key concepts from the course wherever possible.
The quality of IY-T delivery has been very high. This is reflected in parents’ feedback about the facilitators.
The majority of families experience low levels of parent mental health and child social and emotional difficulties at the start of the course and this remains the case at the end of the course. However, the qualitative evidence suggests parents and caregivers see wide-ranging benefits from taking part with the course, including positive changes to their parenting practice and improved relationships with their children. Parents reported finding the opportunity to share with and learn from other parents immensely valuable, and some of them developed supportive relationships with each other that extended beyond the duration of the course.
Future plans
We are carrying out two evaluations of Incredible Years, an effectiveness evaluation to see if Incredible Years improves children’s outcomes, and a test (‘pilot’) study of a random selection process for enrolling parents in Incredible Years that will help us understand if parents can be randomised using the BiBBS cohort.
Project summary written by Kate Mooney
the Better Start Bradford Innovation Hub 
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