On 18th June 2026 we gathered online to celebrate the launch of the new Parents Plus Early Years 2026 Edition.
Welcome and Opening Overview
John Sharry opened by describing Parents Plus as a community of practitioners built around a shared commitment to families rather than simply a training offer. The launch brought together a wide range of practitioners from Family Resource Centres, Children’s Disability Network Teams, Schools, HSE services in Ireland and Family Hubs and Local Authorities across Scotland, Wales, and England.
John reflected on the remarkable journey of the Early Years Programme, first developed over 25 years ago in collaboration with families whose experience and knowledge laid the foundations for everything that followed. This spirit of collaboration, and of parents as experts in their own children, remains at the heart of the programme. The new edition consolidates delivery formats (individual and group) into a single coherent manual, deepens attention to parent wellbeing as a thread running through every session, and formally adopts a neurodiversity-affirming approach grounded in the reality that many families seeking support are raising neurodivergent children. Rather than positioning children’s differences as problems to be corrected, the programme invites parents to tune into their child’s individual needs and advocate for environments where those needs can be met.
Overview of the Parent Plus Early Years 2026 Edition A Closer Look at the New Materials
Gráinne Hampson walked participants through the structure and content of the new materials in detail. Each of the eight sessions is built around three interwoven themes: supporting children’s development, helping parents work towards their own family goals, and parent self-care. The programme holds child and parent wellbeing as equally important and mutually reinforcing. Gráinne showed excerpts from the redesigned facilitator manual, parent book, tip sheets, and worksheets, which drew warm and immediate feedback from attendees in the chat. What came through clearly was how much care has gone into making the materials accessible and practical across the full range of settings in which the programme is delivered, from universal community contexts such as Family Resource Centres through to specialist clinical and disability services.
John went on to outline the breadth of delivery formats the new edition supports: single workshops for larger groups, eight-week group programmes, and fully individualised delivery integrated into home visiting over extended periods. This flexibility makes the programme equally suited to universal primary care and community settings, preventative work with disadvantaged families, specialist disability and early intervention services, and individualised support for parents with additional needs of their own – a programme that practitioners across a wide range of professional contexts can adopt, adapt, and deliver with confidence.
Delivering PPEY in Falkirk The Power of a Warm Welcome
Alice Grant and Susi Wakely from the Additional Support Needs Service in Falkirk brought the room to life with their vivid, honest, and moving account of delivering the programme in Scotland. Five members of their team are now trained, and they have built something genuinely special – a nurturing group environment where parents feel safe, seen, and supported from the very first session. Small details can carry big meaning – the kettle always on, toast for parents who arrive tired after the school run, a sensory box on the table giving everyone permission to attend to their own needs. Alice and Susi spoke candidly about co-facilitation and the ongoing work of recruitment and retention, acknowledging that around a quarter of recruited parents do not attend, and describing the practical steps they take to address this including early contact, over-recruiting, and ensuring parents understand the commitment involved before they begin. The emergence of ASN Play Pals, a parent-led community initiative born out of a Parents Plus group, speaks to something important: a programme that plants seeds of continuing connection between families.
Supporting Individual Families with PPEY Meeting Families Where They Are
Maryrose Costello and Claire Murphy from SPECS, an Area Based Childhood programme in Bray and North Wicklow, shared an inspiring account of their work delivering Parents Plus Early Years since 2015, reaching an estimated 500 families across groups and individual work over that time. Maryrose talked about the collaborative work between SPECS and Parents Plus when her team identified that some families struggled with the pace and volume of the original programme and together developed what became the core individual delivery format with simplified language, a slower pace, more visuals, and content broken into smaller topics tailored to each parent’s goals.
Claire Murphy described how this format opened the door for families who might otherwise not have been reached – parents with literacy difficulties, learning disabilities, parents whose first language was not English, parents living in IPAS centres, and those experiencing mental health difficulties. The use of the video feedback method, with parents watching themselves interact with their children around a self-chosen goal, proved particularly powerful. For many parents, seeing themselves do something well made the learning real in a way that words alone could not. One parent’s reflection, drawn from direct experience of the core programme, captured the approach: “Parents already have the skills in them, this programme just helped bring the skills out.” The integration of this learning into the 2026 edition is a concrete example of what genuine partnership between frontline practitioners and a programme developer can produce.
Panel Discussion A Community of Practice
The event closed with reflections from three long-standing Parents Plus Early Years trainers – Ger Buckley, Ciara Ní Raghallaigh, and Wendy Taylor, alongside Eileen Brosnan. Ger, a facilitator for 19 years, spoke of the profound impact the programme has had on her practice as a speech and language therapist, and encouraged everyone on the call to give time to careful planning and recruitment from the outset. Wendy’s practical wisdom centred on the first session, investing in setting the right tone from day one, so that parents feel genuinely welcome, want to speak, and want to come back. Ciara reflected on what the Parents Plus community of practice has meant to her over 23 years, returning each year to meet other facilitators, being inspired by their work, and going out to run another programme. Eileen offered a closing message – no facilitator should feel alone in trying to get these programmes off the ground, and the Parents Plus team are genuinely there to help. John’s closing thanks ranged across the whole Parents Plus team and board and all who contributed to this programme and the wider work. He returned to the image of the sensory box that Alice and Susi had described – the way facilitators nurture parents in the group is itself a model for how parents can nurture their children.
Managing Big Emotions Chapter PDF Sample
For Parents Plus Facilitators who have previously trained in the PPEY, we provide an additional 3.5 hour training workshop to update you on the new content. The cost of the workshop is €160 which includes the new parent book and parent pack, as well as the Facilitators Manual. Anyone who attended the Parents Plus Early Years Programme training after June 2025 can attend this workshop for free. These workshops will be delivered on 3rd September 2026 or 15th September 2026 (9.30am-1pm).
The first facilitator training for the new edition PPEY programme will take place on the 8th, 9th, 16th 17th & 18th September 2026.