Key messages

• Children with fathers involved in their learning do better at school and have better mental health, even after other factors such as fathers' socio-economic status and education have been taken into account. (Flouri and Buchanan 2001)

• Staff awareness is crucial to involving fathers; many practitioners automatically focus on the mother when contacting a new family. Embed 'father friendliness' into practitioner training and supervision and encourage staff to take a pro-active approach to working with both parents, including non-resident fathers, through discussion at staff meetings etc.

• Develop provision and offer activities that appeal to fathers' interests, such as physical activities, and offer services at flexible times.

• Explicitly include fathers in information about children's early learning, using positive language and images.

• Employ male staff in parent contact roles.

Examples from practice

As part of the ELPP Early Learning Partnerships Project 2006-2008) demonstration project, Action for Children in North Solihull focused their work solely on dads with children between one and three years of age, as this was an under-represented group across local children's centres. They used PAFT (Parents as First Teachers) (link to resources and contact list) and CfL(Campaign for Learning) (link to materials in parents' section) to develop different access points for fathers depending on their needs and confidence. These access points included outreach and social opportunities such as a photo shoot, a dads' 'stay and play' group and individual work in the home using PAFT materials.

The very practical approach of the CfL Best Coach and PAFT materials was effective in keeping fathers involved and offering them something they were able to take away and use with their children. The development of a website (http://www.activ-dads.org.uk), which also provided links to other sites, was also used to engage fathers and promote the services of the project.

Source: Early Years Partnerships Project 2006 - 2008

Liverpool's Active Play project focused on physical activity for dads and their children aged three to five years who attended targeted children's centres and schools.

Active Play workers ran a short course in partnership with the city's Sports, Recreation and Leisure Services to encourage fathers to develop their children's play opportunities using different resources. At the end of the course fathers were given a rucksack with the equipment they needed to continue to play actively with their children, including a camera, stop watch, whistle and a specially designed fob giving handy hints for indoor and outdoor games.

Source: Parents as Partners in Early Learning (PPEL) project 2006 – 2008

The Me and My Dad project in Blackburn targeted two communities in deprived wards. These included a community with a high Asian heritage population and one with an indigenous white population. A fathers' worker was appointed, assisted by a part-time Gujerati and Urdu speaking worker.

Fathers were invited to attend weekly sessions in children's centres and schools. The SHARE family learning programme (text link to resources and contact list) was used as a basis for the activities. Fun activities such as trips and physical play sessions were also included.

In addition to specific activities, the capacity of all practitioners to engage and work with fathers was developed through ContinYou training. This course explored barriers and solutions to fathers' involvement in their children's learning.

Source: Parents as Partners in Early Learning (PPEL) project 2006 – 2008

Key messages

• The link between social disadvantage and children's underachievement affects families from black and minority ethnic communities disproportionately, as they are more likely than other groups to be affected by poverty. (Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project 2004). On top of this, parents whose primary language is not English face additional difficulties in playing a full and active role in their children's education.

• Research provides strong evidence of the benefits of involving black and minority ethnic parents in their children's early learning. EPPE (Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project 2004) found that the effect of the early home learning environment amongst some black and minority ethnic groups was even stronger than among the white UK group and had even more influence on children's achievement in literacy and numeracy than would otherwise be expected given their socio-economic status and other circumstances.

• Avoiding assumptions and stereotyping when responding to black and minority ethnic families is crucial. The need to treat each family as unique is backed up by research (Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) Project 2004) which shows that the variations in parental involvement in early learning are greater within each ethnic group than between groups.

• Services can overcome barriers by ensuring that activities are culturally sensitive, employing a staff group whose ethnic diversity reflects the local community and encouraging parents to view pre-school provision as promoting educational achievement.

• Involving other parents as key communicators, either in formal roles such as parent champions or through local friendship and peer support groups, is particularly important in engaging families from minority ethnic communities.

• Early home learning services should include activities to support parents' language and literacy development, especially where English is not the primary language spoken at home.

• Better monitoring of service take-up amongst families from black and ethnic minority communities is important in understanding patterns of service use.

Examples from practice

At Coram Children's Centre in London Borough of Camden, one week in the year is designated as Languages Week in order to celebrate the varied home languages spoken by children and families in the community. Over 50 per cent of children speak a language other than English at home.

Parents are invited into the centre to take part in activities – to cook, talk and play, read stories or sing songs and rhymes using their home language. The school library service and a local bookshop are invited to bring resources into the centre, including dual language texts. Many activities are also organised by parents themselves.

The week helps everyone – parents, children and practitioners – to gain more understanding about different languages and cultures. Parents who are uncertain of the importance of maintaining a strong first language, whilst acquiring English as an additional language, are reassured that speaking, playing and reading to children in their home language is a helpful thing to do.

Source: Parents, Early Years and Learning (PEAL)

Involving Polish Fathers in Cumbria developed activities to involve fathers from the Polish community. These included computer skills workshops with a play theme for fathers and their children and residential outdoor pursuits workshops. Literacy and numeracy courses were also provided to enable fathers who had low literacy levels to be more involved in their children's education.

Source: Early Years Partnerships Project 2006 - 2008

Parents with additional support needs are a diverse group of people including parents with physical or sensory impairment, learning disabilities, mental health needs, difficulties associated with substance misuse, long-term medical conditions and parents who identify as part of the Deaf community.

Key messages

"How parents experience services early on can really affect how they feel about both services and themselves as mums or dads"

Disabled parent

• Parents with additional support needs continue to face difficulties in accessing services which support family life. The separation between children's and adults' services has resulted in a fragmented approach to work with families and different views about whether the focus of support is on child protection or on supporting people with their parenting role.(CSCI, 2009)

• The ways that services for adults and families are designed, accessed and delivered should ensure that the parenting role is fully supported. The social model of disability, which focuses on what is needed to enable full participation, is helpful in avoiding labelling a disabled parent as a 'problem'. The children of disabled parents should not automatically be seen as children 'in need'. Rather the aim should be to prevent children becoming 'in need' by prioritising services to support adults with their parenting responsibilities. (Morris, 2002)

• Parents want support in their own right as individuals and to have their parenting role recognised, without assumptions made about their parenting capacity. They may be very wary of approaching statutory services, fearing that their parenting will be judged or undermined. Collaboration between statutory agencies, voluntary sector organisations and community-based projects may be a more successful way of reaching these parents.

• Parents need easy access to support, with accessible information and good communication about where to go and what is available, including British Sign Language translation of materials, Easy Read formats and video-phone interpreting.

• Consultation with parents is essential in designing inclusive services and overcoming barriers that individual parents may face in accessing services. One size does not fit all.

• The needs of individual parents need to be carefully considered. For instance, deaf parents may need interpreters for practitioner-parent conferences, careful thought may be needed when organising family 'days out' to ensure a parent in a wheelchair can take part and parents with learning difficulties or mental health needs may need supportive and intensive one-to-one support to engage in their children's early learning.

Example from practice

B had very recently separated from his children's mother. He was isolated, misusing substances and depressed. His Health Visitor visited regularly to find out the kind of support he needed.

When B identified that he would like help and ideas to play with his children, aged two and three years, the Health Visitor brought a worker from the local children's centre to meet B and to let him know about the Peers Early Education Partnership (PEEP) sessions that were run at the centre.

This initial personal contact in his home enabled B to start attending the PEEP sessions. The sessions involved singing, play activities such as making flour dough and storytelling.

Initially B was reluctant to participate, but gradually became more involved as he saw the positive impact on his children. When they first started attending the sessions, his two year old son spent all his time with his dummy in his mouth, didn't talk and communicated only with occasional shrieks.

As the weeks passed, he started to talk, mostly repeating two and three syllable words. Although he still used his dummy, he did so less. He took part in singing and action songs and enjoyed story time especially when he was allowed to turn the pages.

Source: Early Learning Partnerships Project 2006 - 2008

C and T both have learning difficulties and sought support in managing their young child's behaviour. Their son, N, was a loud and active child; they were finding it a challenge to keep his attention for any sustained period and he spent his time wandering around the house on his own.

They have family close by, but are otherwise isolated with few friends or community links. Their health visitor was concerned about their parenting capacity and their awareness of their son's safety needs, as well as about how their learning difficulties could impact on his long-term development. It was felt that they needed support to engage N in age-appropriate play activities.

A PAFT worker (Parents as First Teachers) started visiting regularly for play sessions in the home to increase the parents' understanding of age-appropriate play and positive interaction with their child. The home visits were also an opportunity to discuss practical behavioural strategies to cope with temper tantrums and to provide the parents with emotional support and encouragement to build their confidence in looking after N.

T and C were willing to take on board the PAFT worker's suggestions and were able to put some of the new ideas into practice. This required lots of repetition and adaptation of the PAFT programme to allow for their learning difficulties.

The health visitor also continued to support the family and helped them to access other local family support services, including 'Follow my Child' sessions at the local children's centre.

N now has access to a greater range of activities appropriate to his stage of development and mixes with other children. Both parents show greater confidence and are more able to interact with their child in a positive way. As a family, they are accessing more local services and events and making more links with the wider community.

Source: Early Learning Partnerships Project 2006 – 2008