Parents Plus Early Years Programme in Falkirk
“My name is Susi Wakely and I am a Senior Educational Psychologist at Falkirk Council, Scotland.
The Parents Plus Early Years programme (PPEY) is a 7-week-long course delivered by professionals. At Falkirk Council, the programme was delivered to families of children with significant additional support needs.
Speaking of the programme, Senior Educational Psychologist, Susi Wakely explains,
“The Parents Plus Early Years programme materials encourage parents to connect with each other and feel empowered to support themselves. They emphasise the power of the group dynamic, creating a safe space where parents can be more authentic and share hard truths. This means parents freely giving tips and advice to each other.
I work with some of the families in my casework and I can see the increase in the engagement and confidence of the parents who attended our first group.
Over the weeks we witnessed the added benefits of the programme in supporting the wider families. Parents who attended shared with their partners who were unable to attend, or the parents took it in turns to attend, and one couple attended together. In the second to last session, the husband who attended with his wife openly praised her on the strategies she was using from the programme already. He is by nature a very reserved man and it was powerful to see him come out of his shell and openly praise his wife in the group. They have a child with significant ASN and shared how isolated they had felt prior to coming to the group.
Parents Plus deliver a cost-effective, strengths-based series of parenting programmes. Parents are fully engaged and take ownership of the group. My co-facilitator Alice says it is a group for parents, not a parenting group. The programme fits well with our relationship-based service values.
The Parents Plus team are true to their principles and values – they empower us as facilitators and believe in us as much as we then believe in the parents. They could not be more supportive as an organisation – they want to make it as simple as possible for you as a professional to be trained and get going with a programme. There are no unnecessary barriers and costs with accreditation processes.
You are trusted as a facilitator to work with the materials and make them work for the group of parents you are supporting. This is a very different approach to other parenting programmes.
The materials in the programme are high quality, too. Parents loved the glossy parent books and enjoyed the videos. We had only to sift through the contents each week to pick out the activities and assets that would be most appropriate for our ASN group and did not need to modify anything.
We’d like to say a big thanks to Parents’ Plus for their support in getting our programmes up and running in Falkirk.”
The Core delivery of the Parents Plus Early Years programme (PPEY) is an alternative to the original delivery format of the programme. The concepts of the original programme and the written materials for parents have been adapted to become more accessible to a wider range of parents.
This alternative delivery allows facilitators to run the programme with individual families in a flexible manner, shaped to their needs over an extended period of time.
For facilitators already trained in the PPEY, we offer a special one-module training on May 28th, 2024, to demonstrate how to use the PPEY Core Programme, which includes an introduction to the new format and content, a recap of solution-focused video feedback skills, and copies of the new Parent Pack and Facilitator notes.
This special one module training to show you how to use the PPEY Core will take place on the 28th May 2024 (9:15am-1:30pm) online via Zoom.
This training workshop will –
*Introduce you to new PPEY core format and content
* Recaps on skills of solution-focused video feedback
Copies of the new Parent Pack and Facilitator notes are included.
You can book a place on this special one-module training via the button below.
