Insiders Guideto bringing up children with special needs A parent support course worth repeating

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Insiders Guideto bringing up children with
special needsA parent support course worth
repeating?
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Insiders Guide

• What the project was about
• Course design and delivery
• What we found out
• Why co-delivery works

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What the project was about

• 18 month research project to design, deliver,
  evaluate parent support course.
• To find out if support courses are a good way to
  provide information and support
• To identify the key components of courses that
  parents find most helpful

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Insiders Guidecourse design

• Explored existing research
• Parent support courses are popular and useful
• There are very few support courses that
  specifically target parents of children with SNs
• Parents of children with SNs face particular
  challenges
• Despite the growing emphasis on
  parent-professional partnerships most parent
  support courses are facilitated by professionals

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Insiders Guidecourse design

• Consulted local parents professionals
• Designed a course that spoke to parents
• unique experience
• The Journey So Far
• Travelling On
• Getting the best out of others
• Two specialist thematic modules
• Trained team of parents and workers to co-deliver
  5 separate courses
• Evaluated the outcomes

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Insiders Guide co-delivery

• Parents and workers jointly facilitated
• Captured 2 sets of knowledge experience
• Developed skills to work as a team
• Sharing perspectives
• Introduction to group work skills
• Ways to facilitate learning
• Getting familiar with course materials
• Co-delivery maintenance

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The research dimension

• Evaluated by University of Brighton
• 53 parents attended the 5 courses
• Parents completed before and after questionnaire
  and focus groups
• Course facilitators took part in focus groups and
  kept written journals

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Who came on the course?

• 60 were homemakers
• 20 were from professional occupations
• 20 were from low paid occupations
• 30 lived in a regeneration area
• ½ were tenants and ½ owner occupiers
• 13 lived alone and 33 lived with a partner
• 45 were white British
• 4 men attended, with 1 not completing it

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What did we find out?

• Insiders Guide goes a long way to meeting the
  learning and support needs of parents of children
  with special needs
• It improved positive changes in parents
  confidence competence
• Oversubscribed, popular, very low drop out rate
• Course facilitators valued the experience and
  most felt it improved their parenting and/or
  their practice
• Parent-worker co-delivery was very effective
• It could be copied in other situations as it has
  potential powerful knock on effects for worker
  competence changing the culture of service
  provision
• Comparatively speaking, the course is very good
  value (200 per parent)

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Get in touch for the detail

• Amaze
• Community Base
• 113 Queens Road
• Brighton BN1 3XG
• Tel [phone]
• Email info_at_amazebrighton.org.uk
• Web www.amazebrighton.org.uk