HSE Children’s Disability Services

Parents Plus and the HSE Children’s Disability Services launched a partnership in early 2024 which has continued to grow successfully and expand.

The project is focused on building the capacity of HSE Children’s Disability Network Teams (CDNTs) to improve outcomes for families with evidence-based parenting support and programmes, tailored to the diverse needs of service users and families, provision of tailored workshops to these teams, as well as supervision, accreditation and evaluation support. Funded by the HSE Disability Division, Parents Plus provides an opportunity for practitioners to train and build their skills in delivering the Parents Plus Special Needs and/or Early Years Programmes. This involves provision of the evidence-based training programmes as well as a range of supports to the practitioners and managers, including mentoring and coaching, and Community of Practice sessions focused on integrating the Parents Plus solution-focused, strengths-based approach to working with families. The teams are encouraged to tailor the programme delivery and model of practice to the needs of individual families, which includes running group-based programmes over 6 -12 weeks, and providing tailored individual support to the parents as they need. For example, using the Core Delivery format of the Early Years programme, a parent can receive a mix of group and individual sessions, with the option, where appropriate, of having strengths-based video feedback sessions specific to their child’s needs.

Project Progress

The project has been hugely successful so far with 67 of the CDNTs nationally engaging in the project. In 2024, a total of 110 CDNT practitioners availed of the training across the two programmes. Our ongoing schedule of Community of Practice sessions are very popular and provide a forum for professionals to share practice tips and ideas on topics such as ‘Recruiting parents to attend programmes,’ ‘Core skills in group facilitation,’ ‘The power of solution-focused language,’ and more. A further CPD accreditation level is also built into this project, which is aimed at helping facilitators develop further a high standard in the core competencies of programme delivery.

Further workshops are delivered to team managers on using the Solution Focused model to enhance their leadership and teams. In November 2024, 27 Children’s Disability Network Managers (CDNMs) signed up to attend the workshop, ‘Leading from One Step Behind – A Solution Focused Approach to Leadership.’ The feedback was very positive with CDNMs requesting further opportunities to continue their learning on the Parents Plus Solution Focused approach.

Monitoring and Evaluation

The participating teams are collecting baseline and ongoing data as part of the project monitoring process. This is part of the Parents Plus Quality Protocol that helps services to ensure they are delivering the programmes at a good standard. This is a dynamic process and involves engaging with parents to set good goals for what they will get from attending the programmes and also ensuring a strong system of feedback from parents and then using this feedback so that the delivery can be adjusted and improved to meet the needs of those attending.

Parentline Online Programme Delivery

Since Autumn 2021, Parentline and Parents Plus have had a very successful collaboration in the delivery of online Parents Plus programmes. This project began during COVID as a response to the high volume of parents reaching out to Parentline for support for themselves, and their children struggling with mental health challenges, including anxiety and depression, behavioural challenges, additional needs and a range of other stressful issues affecting them, including separation and divorce.

For Parentline, having online programmes available to point parents towards provides a valuable addition to their parent support offer. For Parent Plus, having accessible programmes available that parents can book on directly (no referral pathway) fulfils our mission of reaching parents, providing high-quality parenting support and achieving positive outcomes for children, young people and families.

The programmes are delivered by Accredited Parents Plus Facilitators, using the solution-focused practice model, with 12 – 14 parents in each group, over six 2 – 2.5 hour sessions. A pre-programme individual goal-setting session is conducted with each parent before starting to help parents understand the content of the programmes, and to consider what change they want for themselves and their children.

An initial examination of the impact of the online programmes showed a range of positive outcomes for the families attending. The parents valued connecting with and sharing with each other, as well as getting and giving advice and support. The other highlights in terms of participant feedback were the helpfulness of the strategies they learnt during the programmes, such as parent self-regulation and the idea of co-regulating with their child, using the ‘pause button’, the power of encouragement, the positive communication techniques when engaging with their children, and parent self-care. In line with international research, the findings confirmed that the delivery of these evidence-based programmes online was a suitable method of support for parents (Florean et al., 2020). A recent 2025 report further highlighted the benefits for participants and is available to read in full here.

With funding from The RTÉ Toy Show Appeal Transformative Grant and Community Foundation Ireland, the project was able to scale up delivery of online Parents Plus programmes with further partners, including Parentline, ADHD Ireland, Family Carers Ireland, the Limerick Northside Family Resource Centre and the Mid-West Family Resource Centre Network. With this funding, between June 2022 and June 2024, 69 further programmes have been run across the Parents Plus programme suite, reaching up to 848 parents.

TUSLA Parents Plus Traveller Project

Since 2023, the Tusla-funded Traveller Project has supported the roll out the Parents Plus Early Years programme to traveller families in their communities.

In 2024, Parents Plus engaged a Parents Plus Early Years Mentor to support the project. Tusla identified early intervention during the early years as beneficial to achieve the best outcomes for children and families. Traveller families are some of the most vulnerable in society, and therefore this was prioritised as a necessary and important project.

Phase 1 included funding six Link Workers in Cavan, Kerry, North West Clare, Tallaght, Donegal and Kilkenny. Phase 2 followed, funding a further five Link Workers in Meath, Ballyfermot, Wexford, North Tipperary and Sligo/Leitrim. These positions are funded through the ‘Parenting Support Unit of Tusla’. A further six areas are being funded through the Equal Start Model, bringing the total to 16 areas. These include Mayo, Galway, Cork, Offaly, Wicklow and Ballymun. All of the Link Workers are trained in the Parents Plus Early Years (PPEY) Core Delivery Programme and are offered ongoing support and supervision. 

The project continues to grow and evolve in a very positive direction. Parents Plus are currently working on adding Traveller-specific videos to the programme. Many Link Workers recruited are Traveller parents themselves, who already have an established and trusting relationship with other traveller parents in their community. These funded positions mean that the Parents Plus Early Years Core Programme can be delivered to every parent in their community on a regular basis. This is complemented by other training programmes such as Baby Massage, etc. Approximately 15 groups were facilitated in 2024 with a number of one to one parenting interventions.

The RTÉ Toy Show Appeal Transformative Grant with Community Foundation Ireland

From June 2022 to June 2024, Parents Plus were delighted to gain funding from a Transformative Grant through Community Foundation of Ireland via the RTÉ Toy Show Appeal. This funding allowed us to build on an existing pilot project and scale up delivery of online Parents Plus programmes with partners Parentline, ADHD Ireland and Family Carers Ireland, the Limerick Northside Family Resource Centre with the Mid-West Family Resource Centre Network.

The work plan over the 2 years was to run 50 evidence-based Parents Plus programmes with our service partners and track the outcomes to improve wellbeing for the families participating. By the end of 2024, we had exceeded this and provided 69 programmes across the Parents Plus programme suite, reaching 866 parents and 2,544 children.

This project represents a successful collaborative approach to providing accessible high-quality parent programmes to families online. The project tapped into a demand and found that as more programmes were opened for registration they booked up very quickly. A core aim of the project was to increase capacity within Parents Plus Charity, Parentline, ADHD Ireland, Family Carers Ireland and the partner organisations throughout Ireland, to meet demand for this support.

The evaluation studies conducted on the Parentline delivery, in collaboration with Trinity College Dublin Psychology Department and the ADHD Ireland delivery in collaboration with the School of Medicine UCD have gathered robust data on the effectiveness of the online Parents Plus programmes and their positive impacts for families.  You can find a summary of the evaluation findings here.

Rethink Ireland Entrepreneurship Impact Fund

In Autumn 2024, Rethink Ireland announced Parents Plus as one of two awardees for the Growth strand of their Entrepreneurship Impact Fund. The aim of the fund is to support social organisations to achieve higher levels of impact by scaling their innovations and reaching their next stage of growth. This multi-year funding will provide Parents Plus with targeted support in areas such as building organisational resilience and investment and procurement readiness. By working in partnership with Rethink Ireland over the course of three years, and investing in the infrastructure Parents Plus needs to scale deeply, together we will create lasting, positive outcomes for thousands more families and communities, and the services set up to support them.

We are extremely grateful to Rethink Ireland and the private donor for selecting Parents Plus to work with and invest in.

JP McManus Benevolent Fund Sponsored Training

In 2024, Parents Plus was successful in gaining funding from the JP McManus Benevolent Fund to enable us to continue building the capacity of services in Limerick and Clare to improve outcomes for families raising a child with a disability.

Using this grant from the JP McManus Benevolent Fund as well as our own resources and funding from the RTÉ Toy Show Appeal, Parents Plus sponsored training places for 44 professionals from the community, education, health and disability sectors in 2024. We are incredibly grateful to receive this funding to support services who work with high need families, and who have limited funding, to train in and deliver our programmes in their communities.

Filos Community Services, Singapore

Filos Community Services has been facilitating the Parent Plus Programmes since 2018. Their practitioners originally trained in the Parents Plus Early Years Programme and since then have also trained in the Parents Plus Children’s, Adolescent, Healthy Families and Special Needs Programmes. The programmes are open to parents attending Filos Community Services as well as from other social service agencies and are also universally accessible to parents who self refer. Many of the parents attending the programmes experience disadvantage. The programmes have also been available to teachers who work in childcare centres who use the principles of the strengths-based approach and strategies to support the children attending their childcare settings.

To draw in parents, Filos publicise the programmes across their social media platforms and word of mouth, with parents from Indonesia and Laos joining in for the online Parents Plus programmes. To date, Filos has had over 700 participants who have benefited from Parents Plus programmes.

Filos embarked on a nationwide initiative called Movements for Health in 2024. The aim of this initiative (‘aware, adopt and advocate’) is to activate communities to strive towards a healthy lifestyle. Filos run a project called P.E.E.R (Play, Eat, Exercise, Rest). One of the programmes that they facilitate under Project P.E.E.R is the Parents Plus Healthy Families. They conducted eight PP Healthy Families sessions last year, with the group of mothers creating a ‘Recipe Book’ of the healthy meals they now cook for their families.

Bristol City Council Families in Focus

Parents Plus has been working in partnership with Bristol City Council for over a decade to successfully deliver Parents Plus programmes to parents and carers across Bristol. In 2024, we were excited to work with the council’s Families in Focus Parenting Team to deliver our first ever scheduled in-person training open to any education, mental health and community professionals ever in the UK.

More than 20 practitioners attended the face-to-face training in the Parents Plus ADHD Programme (PP-ADHD) at Lockleaze Sports Centre, Bristol, from 6-8 May 2024.  The training was led by Parents Plus senior trainer Fred Ehresmann and ADHD Project Lead Lisa Whitlock, and offered information and materials to enhance neuro affirming practice and support parents and carers. The three day event offered participants a rare opportunity to meet and share expertise with other practitioners from other agencies and authorities.

We look forward to continuing to collaborate with the Families in Focus team on future training events for professionals in the Bristol area, as well as ongoing support for trained facilitators.

You’ll find more information and photos from this event here.