Creating Better Futures

ARC DECRA: Creating better futures for children through effective parent education

$370,000 from Australian Research Council, DECRA 2015, Project Number DE150100365

@BetterFutureUTS #CreatingBetterFutures

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A new, free website has been developed as a result of this study, for anyone who wants to work in partnership with families, and to make that partnership as impactful as possible.

https://www.creating-better-futures.org/

A report on the Tasmanian Child and Family Centres has been approved for release by the Tasmanian Government. You can download it here too.

The Report publication coincided with the 2018 National Forum for CFCs, for which I made this special video about nature play with staff from Clarence Plains.

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Children born into circumstances of socioeconomic disadvantage are at risk of missing out on the developmental, educational and social opportunities that give them the best possible start in life. By helping parents in disadvantaged families to cope with adversity, parent education services can mitigate these risks, build resilience in families, and change children’s prospects for the future. This project will identify the most effective ways that parent educators can create lasting positive impacts for families. It will also find out what needs to change to make these best practices more widespread and cost effective, including learning from study of low-cost community-based services.

I wrote a piece for The Conversation that summarises how parenting and issues of social justice, disadvantage, inequality and resilience are linked. It’s not about blaming or judging parents. Nor it is about blaming parents. But it is about harnessing what we know: that parenting is one of the most powerful levers for change; that all parents want the best for their children, but not all are in circumstances that make this easy to do.These important issues, and the project, are also featured in the Australian Association for Research in Education blog, EduResearch Matters.

A summary of how the project links to a wider social problem, using an adaptation of Hammersley’s framework (see my blog and videos), is available here as a CBF one page summary. The project has been featured in the Sydney Morning Herald, and in Brink. The same article also appeared in the Brisbane Times and Medical Express. It was also covered in ‘Education Research Insights’ (the School of Education newsletter).

Things we’ve learned from this project have been included in a Podcast series called ‘Where Parents Fear to Tread‘ by Rebecca Huntley on Kinderling Radio (which recently won best digital radio station in Australia). In Episode 1 there’s a segment where Nick talks about why resilience is important, and things we’ve seen effective services doing to support parents (from about 11:45 onwards, but the whole episode is well worth a listen!).  In Episode 3, I talk about parents’ decisions relating to kids’ screen time and the importance of their own self-care (from 14:30 onwards) and in Episode 4 I talk about decisions relating to children starting school (from about 7:10 onwards).

Nick was also quoted in this Sydney Morning Herald article about support for parents who are struggling – giving comments based on findings from this project.

For regular updates about the progress of this project, see the Creating Better Futures News Room.

Project team and partners

I am leading this project as the ARC DECRA recipient. Dr Teena Clerke is working with me as a Research Associate.

The first two phases were be based in New South Wales. Three major providers of services for children and families are currently working with us as collaborators – Karitane, Tresillian and Northern Sydney Local Health District.

In phase three we continued working with these NSW partners, and have also been collaborating with Tasmania’s Child and Family Centres (through the Department of Education) and the South Australia Women and Children’s Health Network.

The Centre for Parent and Child Support (CPCS) is also working with us. The CPCS is the global home of the Family Partnership Model (FPM) – the approach to supporting families that has been adopted in many services across Australia (as well as in Europe). I am also a member of the national FPM group in Australia.

Aims, concepts and questions

As stated in the proposal to the ARC, the aims of the Creating Better Futures project are:

Aim 1: Identify the most effective practices for bringing about lasting positive change for disadvantaged families through reciprocal learning between parent educators and parents.

Aim 2: Identify systemic aspects of parent education services that enable and constrain this reciprocal learning and thus best practices, including learning from low-cost models.

Our specific research questions translate these aims through relevant concepts, to inform our empirical work.

Theoretically, the study draws on cultural historical theory (which has its roots in Vygotsky’s pioneering work on child development). We have worked closely with Professor Anne Edwards (Oxford University), and the concepts she has developed. We have also engaged with recent work of Annalisa Sannino, Mariane Hedegaard and others in the cultural historical field. We seek to understand partnership as a process of collaborative work between professionals and parents, building resilience in families by transforming the way parents interpret and act on complex problems.

The project is not limited to Vygotskian theory, and we have also been analysing data in terms of epistemic work (drawing on Knorr Cetina and the work of Monika Nerland and others in Oslo), as well as in terms of communication (collaborating with Åsa Mäkitalo from Gothenburg).

Methodology

 

Creating Better Futures had a three-phase design. In total we conducted 130 interviews and 71 observations (shadowing professionals). 175 participants were involved, of which 101 were parents, 61 professionals, and 13 volunteers.

Phase 1 (2015) was based in NSW and involved shadowing professionals as they visit families in their homes. We observed what happens, looking out for instances that relate to the concepts and questions above. It was important to begin with observation, because enabled us to know what questions to ask in subsequent interview-based phases.

Phase 2 (2016) was again based in NSW, and involved tracking the relationship between professionals and families over several months. This allowed us to trace longer term outcomes for families and how they come about. We did this through a sequence of interviews with both professionals and parents.

Phase 3 involved data collection in NSW, Tasmania and South Australia. Here we used one-off interviews to collect stories of positive change. In this phase we  spread fieldwork over a wide range of services and sites.

Publications

Hopwood N, Clerke T & Nguyen A (2017) A pedagogical framework for facilitating parents’ learning in nurse-parent partnership. Nursing Inquiry. doi:10.1111/nin.12220

Hopwood N & Gottschalk B (2017) Double stimulation “in the wild”: Services for families with children at risk. Learning, Culture and Social Interaction 13, 23-27, doi: 10.1016/j.lcsi.2017.01.003 View the video abstract and a blog post about the paper

Hopwood N & Edwards A (2017) How common knowledge is constructed and why it matters in collaboration between professionals and clients. International Journal of Educational Research 83, 107-119. doi: 10.1016/j.ijer.2017.02.007   View video abstract and blog post about the paper

Clerke, T., Hopwood, N., Chavasse, F., Fowler, C., Lee, S., & Rogers, J. (2017). Using professional expertise in partnership with families: a new model of capacity-building. Journal of Child Health Care, 21(1), 74-84. doi:10.1177/1367493516686202

Hopwood N & Clerke T (2016) Professional pedagogies of parenting that build resilience through partnership with families at risk: a cultural-historical approach. Pedagogy, Culture & Society 24(4), 599–615. doi:10.1080/14681366.2016.1197299

Hopwood N, Day C & Edwards A (2016) Partnership practice as collaborative knowledge work: overcoming common dilemmas through an augmented view of professional expertise. Journal of Children’s Services 11(2), 111–123 doi: 10.1108/JCS-08-2015-0027