About the Family and Parenting Institute

The Family and Parenting Institute is the leading centre of expertise on families and parenting in the UK. Families, in all their diversity, form the basis of our society and the foundation for the future. Our mission is to support them in bringing up children.

annual report coverOur aim is the wellbeing of children and families and to achieve this, we carry out research and policy work to find out what matters to families and parents. We develop ideas to improve the services families use and to improve the environment in which children grow up. We work to inform policymakers and public debate and we develop practical resources for people working with families.

Find out more about our organisation and our people and help us to continue in our work.

What we do

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Informing our work through listening

The Family and Parenting Institute speaks to parents on a regular basis to seek their views on the issues that matter to them. Listening to parents is one of the ways we are able to give constructive ideas to government, policymakers and practitioners on how to improve both the environment in which families bring up their children and also the services that are offered to them.

Leading the way with research

The Family and Parenting Institute continues to be at the forefront of research into the role and the needs of families. We do our own research and collate others' research so that in our organisation we hold a large body of knowledge about families today. The Government uses our expertise on its advisory groups and we are valued by ministers and opposition parties for the wealth of our experience and know-how.

Shaping the debate

The Family and Parenting Institute continues to play a key role in shaping this debate:

Supporting practitioners to help families

The evidence we gather from our research informs the work of our consultants and experts who help the people on the frontline work better with parents and families. We reach practitioners through our annual conference, our resources and the pilot projects that we manage. FPI has worked for years on parental involvement in schools. The FPI consultancy service supports the Parenting Fund Round 3 and The Early Home Learning Matters project
Activities have included a workshop series on using clinical tools to measure practitioner effectiveness, whole organisation reviews of effectiveness and developing further the range of easy to read Short Guides by adding a new one on Supervision for Family and Parenting workers. Other work has included supporting the Healthy Schools offer for several Gloucestershire schools, helping Hackney schools consider parental engagement and CAFCASS practitioners to hold children's needs, wishes and feelings in mind.

Working with others

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One of our most important roles is to make the voices of parents heard. We urge government to consult properly with parents when considering policy with family implications and, thanks to our pressure, consultations with parents are taking a central role in the policy making process.
There is hardly an area of domestic policy that does not have an impact on families and we respond to this agenda by building strategic alliances with other groups and tackle issues as diverse as marketing to children, child poverty , family friendly employment policies and childcare.
We have offered seminars for business on parental issues and engaged with a host of agencies, local authorities, government departments and voluntary organisations to help them understand the wealth of research available to them and policy or practice implications of the choices they make in the approach they take.

Last updated: 11th September 2009 at 10:09:49