• School-Parent Partnership Project
• Starting School Project
• Parenting Fund
• Early Learning Partnership Project

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The importance of early learning

Parents are children's first and most effective educators. There is plenty of evidence to show that where parents have aspirations for their children and engage actively with them through conversation, reading and play it has a positive impact on their development and future education. In fact a strong home learning environment will give a child life long benefits.

Sometimes, for whatever reason, parents may feel unable to do this, which may lead to children becoming educationally disadvantaged. We know, too, that chronic poverty, parental mental health problems, parental substance misuse, domestic violence, serious family conflict, relationship problems, harsh and inconsistent discipline are among the factors that work against a positive home learning environment. None of these come singly and the greater the number of risks the greater the impact on the child's development.

The government has invested substantially in children and families' services. Despite this, and the benefits of extending day care and access to early education, the achievement gap between those children whose parents are engaged with their learning & development and those who are not remains unchanged. Although more research is needed to help us understand what works, three kinds of early years' family interventions show promise for children's development:

1. those that enhance mother/child, mother/father and father/child relationships, through encouraging attachment, sensitivity and responsiveness in mother and father and working with couple relationship difficulties;
2. those aimed at the home learning environment through encouragement of play, conversation and aspiration;
3. and those offering direct practical assistance and guidance to parents in families with serious difficulties

With this in mind the DfES (now DCFS) is funding the Early Learning Partnership Project (ELPP) from October 2006 to March 2008. It will demonstrate different approaches to identifying and engaging parents of children aged 1-3 who are at risk of learning delay, and support them to get involved in their child's early learning. The focus will be on parents who may not otherwise understand the value of their role in their child's early learning, or would not know how to get involved.

The Project

The Project has three strands:

• Strand 1: Delivery – Demonstrating different approaches to supporting parents' involvement in their child's early learning from ages 1-3 years;
• Strand 2: Evaluation - Full evaluation of the different approaches and their replicability;
• Strand 3: Workforce Development – up-skilling the workforce to build effective partnerships with parents to support their involvement in their child's early learning.

Strand 1.) The Family and Parenting Institute are leading a consortium of seven voluntary agencies who will be delivering the project. The lead partners are: Barnardos, ContinYou, Coram Family, FWA, Home-Start, NCH and Pre-School Learning Alliance. These agencies will be working in turn with a number of smaller agencies who will help to deliver 12 complementary tried and tested approaches across 20 localities.

The project's aims are:

• to identify, engage and support parents of children at risk of learning delay to develop their ability to support their children
• to build knowledge of what works through demonstration projects and shared learning
• to develop the skills of workers within VCS organisations to offer more specific, tested interventions aimed at enhancing children's development
• to promote and publicise the lessons from the projects with parenting support professionals, policy makers, service planners and commissioners

Barnardos – Located in Northumberland, Newcastle and Bristol the Barnardos projects will be partnering PEEP (Peers Early Education Partnership). In the North East they will be using an adaptation of the Parent Early Education Package aimed at fathers with children under 3. In Bristol the same package will be delivered in the home and aimed at both parents. Skills for Life group training using the PEEP approach will be delivered to isolated families who would not access mainstream provision without support across the city. This service will be working closely with Children's Centres and other early years support services.

ContinYou will be partnering Pen Green Research in Leeds, Bradford, Northamptonshire and Leicestershire to provide the PICL (Parents Involvement in their Children's Learning) for staff in children's centres so they can help parents to understand how their children develop and learn. In addition an adapted version of SHARE training will be introduced to family learning to families that include children of three and under.

In Telford Thurrock Community Mothers will develop a programme that focuses on the involvement of midwives and health visitors in the identification of families whose children are at risk of learning delay.

Coram Family will be partnering Parents as First Teachers (PAFT) in Camden and Islington. Using PAFT's model and materials the project will provide individual outreach and centre-based programmes to parents of young children. These materials will also be incorporated into parenting group work programmes. PEAL (NCB) training with some input from One Plus One will be used as underpinning theoretical support for staff.

FWA will be partnering Home-Start, and PAFT as well as using FWA's Newpin family play programme in the Breckland District Council area (Norfolk), Sheffield and Southwark. The project will enable:

• Improved parenting and parent/child relationships delivered by FWA Home based family support services informed by attachment theory and child development training
• Early Learning using Home-Start home based play (adapted from PAFT) and other packages delivered by Home-Start volunteers and FWA staff in the home
• Learning through play with other children and parents delivered in centres with other delivery partners using FWA's Newpin family play programme
• Behaviour Management delivered by Home-Start and FWA home based support services

The FWA programme will be delivered through home based family support.

Home Start will be partnering One Plus One and Book Start in Worcestershire and four London boroughs. Using Home Start's established approach of volunteer based parenting support this project will provide extra training for volunteers to enable them to enhance their contribution to support parents with their children's development.

Three modules will be developed:

• Home-Start will work with One Plus One to adapt their Brief Encounters model for volunteers to use with families. This strand will include a focus on
  attachment between parent and child and family relationships.
• A recently developed module, called "Listening and Learning with Children" based in part on the Coram model "Listening to Young Children" which works to enhance
  communication with children in readiness for learning.
• The third module – "Let's find out – using other resources" will develop and strengthen the Home-Start module introducing Bookstart ideas and resources to families through volunteers thus giving families an opportunity to engage in their
  children's learning.

NCH will be partnering Parents as First Teachers (PAFT) and the Campaign for Learning in North Solihull activities to extend the work already in place to reach fathers of children aged 1-3. The project has three strands:

• Increasing the level of service provided locally by NCH
• PAFT will train workers in the use of the PAFT tool to support home visiting
• Campaign for Learning will provide and deliver the Family Learning Works materials to engage parents who are working, primarily in relatively low paid work and who are not using centre based parent support services.

Pre-school Learning Alliance will be partnering the National Childminding Association (NCMA), PEEP, ICAN and PEAL in Cumbria and Staffordshire. NCMA's and the Pre-School Learning Alliance's successful approach to engaging parents will be used to contact and support isolated families. These families will be offered the communication, language and learning support developed by PEEP and ICAN. The project will also use the logistical capacity of the Alliance and NCB to raise awareness among parents and practitioners of the importance of engaging families in children's learning. The project builds upon existing local infrastructure in the target areas.

Strand 2.) The Evaluation of the project is being carried out by a team from the educational studies department of Oxford University(awaiting more information)

Strand 3.) Is designed to build sustainability into the Early Learning Partnerships (ELPs) project by providing specialist training to equip the early years workforce – on a large scale - with skills to engage effectively with parents and support them to get involved in their child's early learning.

The core element of the project will be large-scale roll-out of Parents, Early Years and Learning (PEAL), the DfES-funded training developed by a consortium consisting of National Children's Bureau (NCB), Coram and Camden Council. Parenting UK is part of a consortium formed to bid for this programme of work led by NCB with the support of PEAL consortium partners Coram Family, Thomas Coram Children's Centre, LB Camden Early Years Service, National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA), National Childminding Association (NCMA) and Pre School Learning Alliance (PLA).

Information about the workforce development strand and the planned delivery of the PAFT training dates.