Parent Testimonials
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Parents Plus FAQ: Answering Your Most Common Queries
Welcome to our Parents Plus community!
With an influx of new followers and enthusiastic participants, we’ve noticed an increase in queries and curiosities about our programmes and supports.
To ensure that everyone feels well-informed, connected to our mission and understands how we can support their service delivery we’ve decided to compile a FAQ list, addressing some of the most frequent questions we’ve encountered.
Whether you’ve just joined us or have been a long-standing supporter, this guide aims to provide clarity and deepen your understanding of Parents Plus.
Who or what is Parents Plus? Parents Plus is a charity that develops evidence-based parenting and mental health programme training for professionals working across the community, education, disability, mental health and youth sectors. Our mission is to improve the well-being of children and families by empowering professionals to deliver our suite of evidence-based programmes in their services and at their point of need. Learn more about us at https://www.parentsplus.ie/about/
Who can benefit from Parents Plus programmes? Parents Plus programmes are designed for professionals who work with children and families across Community, Mental Health, Disability and Education. These range from early years’ programmes for parents of young children to adolescent programmes targeting the unique challenges faced by parents of teenagers. We have developed eight flagship programmes, in partnership with services supporting families and parents and children. Learn more at –https://www.parentsplus.ie/parents-plus-programmes/
How are Parents Plus programmes developed? Parents Plus programmes are evidence-based, which means they are developed in collaboration with families, backed by research, and have been found to be effective in clinical trials. They draw from positive psychology, solution-focused therapy, and social learning theory. Currently over 26 studies conducted in clinical, community and disability settings attest to their effectiveness. Read more about our evidence and research by visiting – https://www.parentsplus.ie/parentsplus-research/
What are the training opportunities available? If you want to develop your professional skills and improve outcomes for children, adolescents, and families then Parents Plus offers professional training courses for those who wish to deliver our programmes in their communities or settings. The training is comprehensive and equips professionals with the necessary skills to facilitate the programmes effectively. You can learn more about the training on offer and ongoing support at – https://www.parentsplus.ie/parents-plus-programmes/
What support does Parents Plus offer Professionals?
At Parents Plus, we deeply understand the crucial role that professionals play in the seamless and impactful delivery of our programmes. Our extensive experience in evaluating and monitoring the outcomes of our programmes has granted us insights into the tangible benefits they offer families and communities. Here’s a comprehensive overview of the support services and tools we provide to professionals:
1. Evaluation and Monitoring:
- We emphasize the integration of evaluations into local deliveries of our programmes. The benefits include ensuring lasting outcomes, adapting to local community needs, showcasing positive results, recruiting new parents for future groups, fostering collaboration with parents and community networks, and empowering parents to be a pillar of support for one another.
- We offer templates that are tried and tested, enabling you to monitor and evaluate your groups effectively.
2. Quality Protocol and Accreditation:
- Our evidence-based quality protocol is designed to reinforce the effective delivery of Parents Plus Programmes after training.
- The Quality Protocol is an integral part of our facilitator training. It emphasizes establishing client-centred goals, adhering to the core principles of the programmes, obtaining session-by-session client feedback, and incorporating a weekly reflective space in supervision.
- Checklists are provided to rate practice development and set specific goals for facilitator development.
- We encourage professionals to explore our Parents Plus Quality Protocol and our Facilitator Accreditation process in the Programme Resources section (Note: Access requires trained facilitator login).
3. Exclusive Resources:
- As a trained Parents Plus Facilitator, you gain unrestricted access to a plethora of resources, including promotional materials, expert articles, programme presentations, a Q&A forum, newsletters, extra handouts, printable certificates, and insightful parenting articles and links.
4. Marketing Support:
- We recognize that reaching out to parents and referrers can be challenging due to constraints in time and resources. Hence, we provide tailored marketing support:Issuing press releases to local media outlets.Promoting upcoming groups on our digital platforms.Offering PowerPoint presentations for referrers.Supplying custom posters and fliers for recruitment purposes.
Our core belief is in empowering professionals to profoundly impact families. We are steadfast in our commitment to providing professionals with the support, resources, and tools they need to deliver our programmes effectively and make a lasting difference in the communities they serve.
Do Parents Plus offer programmes to parents? Our mission is to empower professionals to support families and we do this by providing evidence-based programmes to those working in the community, education health and disability services. So although we don’t regularly offer programmes to parents we do however provide some resources for them and updates on courses for parents that are available through our partners. You can find out more on our website at – https://www.parentsplus.ie/parents/
At Parents Plus, our team works tirelessly with various services spanning Community, Mental Health, Disability, and Education.
Our primary objective is to enhance their capacity and skills to not only deliver our interventions but to also evaluate them effectively, ensuring they are tailored to the needs of local communities.
For professionals eager to elevate their impact and enrich their communities, we offer a beacon of support and expertise.
If you’re interested in onsite training, supervision for your teams, or tailored assistance in rolling out and evaluating our proven programmes for maximum community impact, please don’t hesitate. Reach out to our Impact Lead, Vicki Byrne, at vicki@parentsplus.ie.
Let’s foster meaningful change together.
Do you want to develop your professional skills and improve outcomes for children, adolescents, and families?
Look no further than the Parents Plus suite of trainings, offered this Autumn. From the early years to adult, and also supporting complex needs, each programme will equip you with the evidence based skills, practical strategies, and ongoing support, to improve outcomes for the families and children you work with. Download or view our brochure below.
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The Parenting Network Pre-Budget 2024 Submission
The Parenting Network is an all-island network of organisations, academics and policy managers committed to improving family well-being through Parenting Support. Parenting Support refers to a range of information, support, education, training and counselling. There are also other measures or services that focus on influencing how parents understand and carry out their parenting role.
The Parenting Network aims to ensure that all those who parent in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are proactively supported and valued in their parenting role to achieve better outcomes for children, parents, families and the wider society. We recognise the significant challenges facing parents at present across a range of different fronts, whether in terms of increased costs of living, homelessness, the cost of education, raised levels of childhood anxiety and broader mental health challenges facing young people. We firmly advocate that all those involved in parenting need to be reached by national policy and subsequent supports, not just those identified by professionals as having specific needs. As services cannot reach families and parents they are unaware of, now more than ever progressive universalism needs to be inherent to the design, funding and implementation of parenting supports.
The Parenting Network also recognises the significantly progressive effort undertaken by the Government and statutory agencies in recent years in the critical area of parenting support. There is a very strong policy platform which creates a roadmap for information and services aimed at increasing a parent’s knowledge, confidence and skills to best support their children and families.
The Parenting Network asks:In Budget 2024, the Parenting Network calls on Government to allocate the necessary funding to give effect to the policy commitments set out in the National Model of Parenting Support Services and Tulsa’s Parenting support Strategy 2022 – 2027, and to realise the objectives of the newly established Child Poverty and Well-Being Programme Office. In a context where the Exchequer is running a significant budget surplus, Budget 2024 should be the Budget where an appropriate and ring-fenced allocation of funding is directed specifically to supporting parents.
How this would look on the ground:
- Supporting all parents to be confident and capable in their parenting role: Funding must be directed towards increased parenting support programmes (particularly those dealing with managing anxiety in young people) regardless of family context or circumstance, additional resources for organisations directly supporting parents in the community, training and counselling. It should also be used to provide support for communicating services and supports to parents to increase awareness and uptake of available supports.
- Applying a whole-of-government approach to supporting parents: The parenting focus and recommendations in all relevant national policy initiatives (Sláintecare, First 5, successor to the National Disability Inclusion Strategy, Sharing the Vision etc.) need to be resourced.Planned and quantifiable cross-departmental co-operation would enable resource leveraging and shared accountability for meeting national targets for parental support.
- Clarifying prevention and early intervention structures: While parenting is the common point of intervention for both Tusla and the HSE, there is ambiguity around how funding is allocated to and used by both for prevention and early intervention. The preventive potential and return on parenting support must be recognised through clear and accessible structures such as Prevention, Parenting and Family Support (Tusla) and HSE community- based supports, such as child developmental checks, breastfeeding support clinics etc.
- Allocating €30m per annum for three years to adequately and sustainably resource parenting support: Based on similarly proportional investment in Sure Start in Northern Ireland, Family Hubs in the UK , and on-line parenting education and mental health support in Australia , this multi-annual funding would facilitate existing and additional parenting supports to address rapidly increasing needs such as disabilities and mental health, and extend beyond current geographical limitations. In order to increase and maximise its reach, this investment must include staffing costs and pay parity for services in the Community and Voluntary sector.
Budget 2024 needs to address the current national narrative around parental pressure and support deficits by ensuring that PARENTING SUPPORT is funded multi-annually, prioritised and planned nationally, and delivered locally.
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Places Are Now Closed For The Parents Plus Early Years Programme
Please Note That Places Are Now Closed For The Parents Plus Early Years Programme
We are delighted to share that Parentline is running our Parents Plus Early Years Programme as a 6-week course, running for 2 hours per session.
This will be run entirely online, and available to parents across Ireland.This course is suitable for parents of children aged 1 to 6 years, and covers ideas such as:
- Helping your children develop good attachments and relationships
- Managing tantrums and misbehaviour
- Building your children’s language and development
- Reducing your own stress as parents
- Helping your children to concentrate and learn
- Increasing your children’s self-esteem
- Establishing positive daily routines
Paretline welcome welcome couples to attend together under a single booking. Please include the second parent’s name when completing the form.
Cost includes a parent book which will be posted out prior to course starting.
These courses are charged on a “pay what you can” basis. All payments received are reinvested into running these programmes in future.
About The Parent Plus Early Years Programme (PPEYP)
There is agreement across practice and policy that children are shaped by their early childhood experiences and that this is a crucial time to provide support to parents to help develop connected responsive relationships with their children.
The focus of the PPEYP is to support parents and carers to increase their skills in positively engaging with their children, tuning in to their child’s needs, and responding effectively. The PPEY is suitable for parents of children aged 1 to 6 years, including young children with additional needs and has a strong evidence base showing a positive impact for families who attend the programmes in terms of improved behaviour and a reduction in parents’ stress levels, with an overall increase in their feelings of satisfaction as parents.
