The Triple P – Positive Parenting Program is a parenting and family support system designed to prevent – as well as treat – behavioural and emotional problems in children and teenagers. Its main goals are increasing the knowledge, skills, and confidence of parents and reducing the prevalence of mental health, emotional, and behavioural problems in children and adolescents. It aims to prevent issues in the family, school and community before they arise and to create family environments that encourage children to realise their potential.

Triple P offers solutions to support social and behavioural problems in children. It can equip parents with the skills and confidence they need to be self-sufficient and be able to manage family issues without ongoing support. Triple P is delivered to parents of children up to 12 years.

Triple P is offered mostly by Parent and Family Support Advisors who you can contact through your child’s school

The Incredible Years is a series of interlocking, evidence-based programmes for parents, children and teachers, supported by over 30 years of research. The goal is to prevent and treat young children’s behaviour problems and promote their social, emotional, and learning skills. The programme is used worldwide in schools and offers support for different age groups.

The Incredible Years programme helps reduce aggression and emotional problems in children aged 0 to 12 years, preventing later problems in the teenage years. The parenting programmes consist of about 4 to 20 weekly parent group sessions. Each parent group session has two group leaders, 10 to 14 participants, and lasts 2 to 2.5 hours.

Webster Stratton is offered by Health Visitors and by Parent and Family Support Advisors who can be contacted through your child’s school.

Tuning into Kids is an evidence-based parenting programme that focuses on the emotional connection between parents and children. In particular, the programme teaches parents skills in emotion coaching, which is to recognise, understand and respond to children’s emotions in an accepting, supportive way. This approach helps the child to understand and manage their emotions. The programme has been shown to improve parenting, parent-child relationships and children’s emotional competence and behaviour. The programme has been particularly effective with children with clinical-level emotional and behavioural difficulties. The ‘teens’ version is suitable for families with teenage children.

Tuning into Kids and Tuning into Teens are offered by some Parent and Family Support Advisors, who can be contacted through your child’s school, and Home-Start West Somerset.

The Solihull Approach is a 10-week parenting group for parents with children aged 0 to 18 years. It is based on the Solihull Approach model that looks at how your child develops, understanding how your child is feeling, tuning into what your child needs, responding to how your child is feeling, different styles of parenting and developing good ways of communicating with your child.

Solihull Approach is offered by Health Visitors in Somerset

Mellow Bumps is a six-week group antenatal programme lasting 2 hours each week. The programme supports mums-to-be during pregnancy to understand all about their new baby and emphasises the importance of early interaction to help brain development.

Each week there are activities that promote emotional wellbeing for the mums-to-be and help them to reduce stress. The activities raise awareness of the social capabilities of babies and the value of early interaction. Mellow Bumps is designed to be offered at about twenty to thirty weeks gestation to capture the period when the pregnancy is most secure and the mums-to-be may have experienced foetal movement but before their attention is taken up with delivery.

Mellow Bumps is delivered through Health Visitors.

Being a parent can be hard and challenge any relationship. We want to help parents learn how to argue better and reduce any unhealthy conflict, either living together or separated.

Any parent living in Somerset can now access 3 online courses (30 minutes each) at OnePlusOne/parents – all you need is your postcode and email address to log into all of them.

• Me, You and Baby Too. Becoming parents can change any relationship. Tiredness and stress as a result of having a new baby can lead you and your partner to misunderstand each other. This course can help improve how you communicate with each other and how you could reduce any unhealthy conflict.

• Arguing Better. Understanding how to argue in a constructive way can make all the difference in your relationship. This thought-provoking course takes you through new options for managing disagreements in your relationship.
• Getting it right for children. Separating can be difficult for everyone involved. It’s easy for children to get caught up in the middle of disagreements. This course helps parents develop effective ways to cooperate after separation.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) webinar is designed for parents and carers who want to prevent Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) or support their child(ren) to heal from previous adversity. It has been developed by the Educational Psychology Service in collaboration with the Somerset Parent Carer Forum as part of a Public Health project. This project aims to raise awareness of ACEs, and provide adults with strategies they can use to support our children and young people to become resilient and healthy adults.

Being a parent carer of a child or young person with additional needs can bring extra situations which are challenging to know how to handle. To help support parent carers navigate these Somerset Parent Carer Forum have created a range of workshops based on the subjects you have said would be helpful.

The workshop will have two main parts.

• Part 1 will provide information and ideas of things you can try (strategies).
• Part 2 will give you time to discuss your own circumstances and form a plan of what you can try to help.

Alongside this we will also have a range of information workshops both face to face and online.  Find out more including dates and topics at Somerset Parent Carer Forum.