Developing advocacy support for parents with learning difficulties

Grantholders: Tim Booth and Wendy Booth, funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The project set out to explore ways of delivering support to parents with learning difficulties that are non-stigmatising, non-intrusive and responsive to their own views of their needs.

Aims

• To develop a locally-based support network for parents with learning difficulties in Sheffield.

• To undertake a user-centred evaluation of the project in terms of its success in

  • enabling parents by creating opportunities for them to develop and exhibit their competence and enhance their self-esteem

  • empowering parents by improving their access to resources and their sense of control over their own lives and their family's destiny

  • and extending parents' social networks through contact with other families in a similar situation.

• To produce practical guidelines for organising such a support network as a model for use elsewhere.

Methods

The project broke new ground by developing an innovative approach based on the following distinguishing characteristics:

• A principled approach grounded on the ideas of the advocacy and self-help movements.

• A theoretically-driven approach based on an explicit model of parenting and social support.

• A research-based approach rooted in the experience of parents themselves.

• An experimental approach aimed at testing out different ways of meeting the support needs of parents.

• An evaluative approach based on the careful and systematic evaluation of project outcomes.

• A user-led approach which involves parents in both the development and the evaluation of the project.

The development project

The development project – called Parents Together – was conceived as a piece of action research. It set out to develop and evaluate in partnership with parents practical ways of supporting them in their parenting role.

Drawing on an ecological model of the relationship between parenting and social support, the project adopted an advocacy approach aimed at

• reducing the environmental strains that undermine parents' ability to cope

• challenging the discriminatory views of their fitness for parenthood held by many professionals

• and providing forms of support that encourage parents and give them confidence in their own parenting.

The evaluation

The evaluation formed a continuous part of the project and focussed on two issues:

1. The effectiveness of an advocacy approach towards supported parenting with a view to drawing out the lessons for use elsewhere.

2. Testing the ecological model of parenting and support on which the project was based.

The project followed a participatory strategy involving the parents themselves as co-participants in all stages of the evaluation in order to ensure it was driven by their experience.

The action phase and follow-on

Parents Together ran for eighteen months from February 1996 to July 1997. Follow-on funding was awarded by The Joseph Rowntree Foundation with the aim of establishing the project on a more permanent footing. Sheffield Women's Cultural Group agreed to provide a home for the group and this partnership led to the Supported Learning Project.

A full account of the Parents Together project is given in the book Advocacy for parents with learning difficulties: developing advocacy support.