News

From 20 March 2010 we will be taking over responsibility for support to those who work with parents from the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners (the parenting academy).

The Parenting Academy's work will be established as a new programme within our organisation - Support to Work with Parents and Families - and will have three distinct threads: 

1. Qualifications and training development and delivery.
2. Communication and strategic change.
3. Promotion of evidence-based practice throughout the workforce.

The aim of the 'Support to Work with Parents and Families' programme will be to provide support for updating the work with parents (WWP) national occupational standards (NOS) and qualifications and link it to the agreed strategy of the children and young people's workforce.

The programme, agreed with the Department for Children, Schools and Families is very much a continuation of work previously carried out by the Academy. It is also characterised by partnership working as is so much of our work so we look forward to adding a range of new networks. 'Think Family' and 'Think Father' will remain key parts of our message.

To achieve this we plan to make available 600 places for the Level three WWP qualification and 5,000 places for practitioners engaged in outreach work from children's centres.

'Support to Work with Parents and Families' also gives us a great opportunity to ensure those who work with parents and families are aware of the support we can offer and make the workforce more aware of the contribution of their work to improved outcomes for children and young people.

A key part of this work will be to promote more use and awareness of evidence-based training programmes.

We will be making 2,000 places available on training to deliver evidence-based parenting programmes, including a project to provide more access to training for the third sector.

We will also be working with King's College, London to promote use of the Commissioning Toolkit. This resource provides information and guidance on the quality and effectiveness of different parenting programmes.

Future plans involve working with parenting commissioners and local authorities to ensure parenting strategies are effective and sustainable through appropriate management and supervisory support to practitioners.