In 2021, when we started working in Stoke-on-Trent, one of the first things we did was commissioned NESTA to help understand parents’ views on being a parent or carer in Stoke, the support available to them and what needs they might have. The research with parents included a survey which received responses from 39 parents and carers in our target electoral wards, Abbey Hulton and Bentilee. There are 2500 children aged 5 and under in these wards.
It takes time to build trust and relationships in communities; a critical step towards reaching the many parents and carers who we want to support. We have been making good progress in forging connections by:
- Providing 1:1 support for parents and carers through our parent connectors;
- Communicating with parents and carers through Facebook (audience of almost 1600 followers) and newsletters (distribution list of almost 300)
- Supporting partners to establish Parent Baby and Toddler groups with high quality provision and operating at capacity
- Catalysing extra support for parents and carers through wider network of organisations – i.e. New Vic, YMCA, Bentilee Volunteers.
Our focus now is on scaling this activity so we can reach even more parents and carers with the right messages, including about early childhood development, to encourage them to attend more groups and empower them to support their children and seek help when they need it.
Our Parents' survey 2024
To ensure our work is responding to the local context and reflecting local needs and opportunities, we conducted another survey with parents and carers in Stoke-on-Trent in May 2024.
This time round, we received 511 responses, a testament to the fact that we are now better embedded in the community. Of these 511 responses, 199 came from parents living within either Abbey Hulton or Bentilee.
Parents and carers were asked what information they receive and whether it’s what they need.
We found that:
The general trend is that parents and carers feel they have less information as their child gets older.
This is in line with recent research from Kindred Squared. In their national survey on School readiness, 44% of parents said they don’t know about the developmental milestones children are expected to reach before Reception, and teachers said that 56% of parents don’t know what being ‘school ready’ looks like. This contributes to a situation where teachers report that only 54% of children are ‘school ready’.
Responding to the findings in our survey and the wider research we have launched an online campaign to support parents and carers to prepare children for school in Stoke-on-Trent which is being shared across our channels and via our partner schools and nurseries.
Parents and carers want information on a wide range of issues relating to their children’s development.
But 35% of parents feel that the information they are given is not that helpful.
This highlights a disconnect between the information being put out by the early years system and what parents say they want. The feedback from parents was that the information they receive is often
- Too generic and not tailored to their needs
- Not timely and not reflecting what parents and carers need to know to support the next stage of their children’s development
- Hard to access with parents needing to work hard to find things out
- Contradictory
“There is little information around and what information that is out there is contradictory. You get told one thing by your doctor, another by your midwife and completely different info depending on what HV you are seeing that day/week. It's very hard to know what to trust. A lot of the information is also out of date.”
Clearly there is a need to balance the one-to-one interactions which some parents want with a pragmatic and affordable approach to providing timely, useful and reliable information to as many parents and carers as possible. We are working with partners to improve the provision of information.
Many parents or carers (44%) said that the information they got made them worried they were not doing enough. 60% said the main thing that might stop parents/ carers asking for help was ‘feeling judged’.
This finding is significant as it shows the importance of information and advice to parents and carers being designed and delivered in a way which avoids judgement (with their input) along with the need to build trusted and ongoing relationships to support them in seeking help when they need it.
“Parents feel so pressured to follow all information and guidance but sometimes it's impossible financially or the baby just doesn't like it. I think all the pressure can ruin the whole experience from pregnancy”.
One of the key factors in determining whether parents felt they had sufficient information about the process of starting school was whether they regularly attended parent, baby and toddler groups (PBTs):
Parents and carers who regularly attended parent baby and toddler groups felt better informed, and better supported at the various stages of their children’s development. This is a sign of the positive impact that these kinds of groups can have on parents in addition to the opportunity to meet other parents. In the wards where Thrive at Five has been working, we saw a lower number reporting they never attend parent, baby and toddler groups (34%) and reporting they hadn’t heard of PBTs (17%).
These insights strengthen the case for Thrive at Five’s investment in parent baby and toddler groups. In our first survey in Stoke-on-Trent, we learnt that 52.3% of the parents we spoke to never or rarely met up with other parents. Working in collaboration with local partners, we have increased the number of Parent, Baby and Toddler Groups fivefold, helping more parents and carers to connect and build supportive relationships in their community.
You can find out more about our parent, baby and toddler groups here.
The survey has also helped us understand what we need to do to reach parents and support them to attend these groups. In Thrive at Five wards 31% of parents attended a PBT for the first time because they knew someone who already attended. Others mentioned that they had been encouraged to attend by our parent connectors or by referrals from other organisations. We are acting on this information by maximising parents’ opportunities to meet with and talk to parent connectors in community spaces and to use the voices of parents who attend in our communications to hear from them on why they attend and how they overcome any fears or barriers to joining.
How was the survey developed?
We developed the survey with parents, consulting them on questions and testing their responses prior to more widely publicising. It was shared digitally (via our newsletter, Facebook and through our partners) and face to face. Our Parent Connectors visited community spaces to make sure the survey reached as wide a range of people as possible. This collaborative approach with both parents and our partners has contributed to the significant uplift (13 fold increase) in responses to this recent survey.
We are also very pleased that over 200 parents who responded to the survey signed up to help us with further consultations which we will use to understand more about some of the issues raised, including how we can ensure parents do not avoid seeking help due to a fear of judgement.
Using the research to influence the way the system works
Guided by the findings Thrive at Five is:
- Rolling out an intensive communications campaign about school readiness and what parents can do to prepare their children for the transition to school.
- Working with local partners towards ensuring that information is easy to access and covers the range of issues that parents and carers need support with as their children reach different stages of development in their early years.
- Continuing to work with local partners to strengthen the network of parent, baby and toddler groups and to improve communications to reach more parents.
- Considering in all our work how best to overcome parents’ fear of judgment.
We will continue to listen to parents and carers as our approach and model evolves.
The research has been shared with a wide range of local stakeholders to help inform their approach to their work. This includes at our recent “Parents Thriving in the Early Years” conference held in Stoke-on-Trent on June 19th 2024, where over 70 professionals attended from across the system: from local schools, nurseries, health, local authority, community organisations, and local experts to hear the latest scientific research on developing babies’ brains and to share anecdotes, stories, discussions and expertise, as well as to hear in person from parents in the wards of Bentilee and Abbey Hulton, where we have been working over the last three years.
We thank everyone who took the time to contribute to the research, helping us shape services to meet the needs of parents and carers.