Effective strategies used in Better Start Bradford for engaging parents in universal early parenting interventions: a STRIVE study

Parenting interventions can help parents to understand and support their child. This can improve children’s health and family relationships. But it can be a struggle to find families who need support, and some parents drop out of interventions early. This is more common for parents from minority ethnic groups, those who do not speak English or those living in poorer areas.
Services that deliver parenting interventions have tried different ways or ‘strategies’ to find and help more parents to attend. For example, service staff might visit parents in their home before an intervention starts to introduce themselves and answer any questions.

Information has been collected about the strategies used to support parents to attend parenting interventions over a ten-year period via ‘Better Start Bradford’. But we do not know how successful the strategies were or how useful they are in other places outside Bradford.

Our research project, called STRIVE for short, will:
Learn from Bradford data about which strategies worked well to:
? Identify parents to invite to parenting interventions.
? Sign parents up to take part.
? Encourage parents to come to sessions.
? Support parents to complete an intervention.

This study is important to ensure that everyone, regardless of their background or circumstances, gets equal access to support they need to help their children develop well.

How will we do this?
We will look at what strategies were in Bradford to identify and invite parents to parenting interventions, and what encourages them to keep coming. We will find out which strategies worked best in Bradford and how much they cost.