Supporting parents in children's early learning: families connect evaluation and impact results

Aideen Gildea, Pippa Lord, Christine Bradley

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

Objectives/aims
Families Connect is a programme developed by Save the Children UK (SCUK) to support and engage parents in their children’s learning in the home and build relationships between parents and schools.The independent evaluation aimed to provide evidence of programme impact and effective implementation to feed into further development of Families Connect andwider parental engagement work in the early years.

Methods
A randomised efficacy trial explored a range of parent and child outcomes and an implementation process evaluation provided the methodological framework for the evaluation.
The evaluation involved four strands: 1: Secondary analysis of existing data. 2: Small scale efficacy RCT: randomisation of 483 families in 31 schools across UK; focusing on children aged four-to-six; in schools with school level FSM > 20%; baseline and two follow-ups measuring vocabulary and numeracy, and social/emotional outcomes;baseline and one follow-up measuring parents’ confidence and engagement in their child’s learning. 3: Process evaluation: four strands exploring: programme model;implementation and fidelity; schools’ experiences; parents’ views/home learning environment. Informed by Humphrey et al.’s (2016 updated 2019) guidance for implementation and process evaluation and Sharples et al. (2018). 4: Costs evaluation: to establish costs of the intervention to schools, and cost per pupil per year.
Additional analysis using regression models and mediation was carried out to assess the relationship between social disadvantage and the programme’s theory of change,and which aspects of the theory of change have the potential to impact on children’s future attainment.

Main findings
The evaluation found that Families Connect increases parental engagement in children’s learning, improves parental skills, and improves aspects of children’s social and emotional development. Results showed no impact on children’s receptive vocabulary or numeracy skills. However, it identified key areas for improvement that would further strengthen the development of the programme and contribute to broader understanding of how to support key early learning outcomes.
Additional analysis of the findings demonstrated that Families Connect was more impactful on the home learning environment for families on lower incomes and those eligible for free school meals. It was also found to have a greater impact on parent–child enrichment scores for families on lower household incomes and a greater impact on parent–child interaction scores for parents with lower education levels.
Parents who took part had higher levels of interaction with their children inside the home, took part in more enrichment activities outside of the home, and had a stronger feeling that they knew how to help their child to learn.
An increase in parental efficacy led to important behavioural changes for children. Itled to reductions in children’s total difficulties, peer problems, and emotional problems,six months after. These changes did not affect attainment as hypothesised. However,caution should be applied to dismissing the potential relationship between child behaviour and attainment: both changes in child behaviour, and the measures used to assess attainment, were measured at the same time point after six months.
Increases in parent-child interactions led to increases in children’s softer skills, which led to an increase in attainment. Children’s softer skills was the only variable to significantly impact attainment in the hypothesised direction and to act as a significant mediator between an intermediary outcome and attainment. The importance of changes to parent-child interaction within the home environment to improvements in children’s softer skills, and the relationship between softer skills and attainment supports growing evidence on the importance of the home learning environment whilst providing additional focus on the role of children’s softer skills.


Original languageEnglish
Publication statusPublished - 10 Oct 2023
EventEvidence and Implementation Summit 2023 - Melbourne, Australia
Duration: 09 Oct 202311 Oct 2023
https://www.eisummit.org/

Conference

ConferenceEvidence and Implementation Summit 2023
Abbreviated titleEIS 2023
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityMelbourne
Period09/10/202311/10/2023
Internet address

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