What Does ‘Supporting Parents’ Mean?—Parents’ Views

Abstract

This paper reports on the views of a community sample of 428 parents with primary school-aged children. In a previous study parents had identified that they needed ‘support’. This study was designed to try to understand what types of support parents already have and what support they think needs to be available to them. Most parents use informal support of family and friends and have limited awareness of what is available to them in the way of locally based services. They propose services which are already available, like Parentline, but of which they are unaware. There seems to be a need for universal, non-stigmatising services which design their programmes with parents and can refer to more specialised services, e.g. Social Services or Family Centres. These services need to be located in agencies which parents frequent and are comfortable with, such as schools and health settings.