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Response to Deborah Ghate: Supporting parents in the poorest communities Ilan Katz (SPRC)

Response to Deborah Ghate: Supporting parents in the poorest communities Ilan Katz (SPRC) ACWA Conference Sydney, August 2010. Will cover. What I see as the main points of Deborah’s talk Reflections on some of the issues Relevance to Australia. Some key points. Importance of parenting

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Response to Deborah Ghate: Supporting parents in the poorest communities Ilan Katz (SPRC)

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  1. Response to Deborah Ghate: Supporting parents in the poorest communities Ilan Katz (SPRC) ACWA Conference Sydney, August 2010

  2. Will cover • What I see as the main points of Deborah’s talk • Reflections on some of the issues • Relevance to Australia

  3. Some key points • Importance of parenting • Challenges faced by parents in poor environments • Difficulty accessing formal and informal support • Children can be supportive and/or burdensome • Many parents cope despite adversity • Impact of local neighbourhood • Some forms of parenting support work well but others don’t • The importance of evidence based interventions.

  4. Issues - parenting • Is the focus on parenting justified? • Should we not focus on poverty rather than parenting? • What are the implications for state surveillance of parents? • Should parenting programs focus on child behaviour or on wider factors eg employment • Supports other than parenting programs • Cash transfers, child care etc. • Should there be an explicit ‘contract’ between the state and parents?

  5. Issues – evidence based parenting practice • Is there really evidence that the more ‘evidence based’ an intervention is, the more effective it will be? • Intention to treat • Do we change the things that are easy rather than those that are important? eg warmth • Do we know how to change poor communities? • Sure Start and CfC • Implementation science • Importance of other factors such as commitment, leadership etc of large scale interventions • Other challenges of taking to scale

  6. Evidence and parenting • How much evidence of cross-cultural effectiveness? • What is the evidence of population level changes and long term effects? • Cumulative effect of multiple evidence based programs • The question of hype – understanding what we can and cannot easily change.

  7. Relevance for Australia • Parenting support in Australia still embryonic and fragmented • eg only now implementing PPL • No parenting academy, institute etc. • Many pilot and one off initiatives – CfC, HIPPY, BF etc • Services and benefits more targeted than in the UK • Australia provides extreme example of state surveillance of parenting • NTER • Cape York Initiative • New Income Management • Lack of real investment in rigorous evaluation

  8. Other Australian issues • How much of the evidence base has to be Australian? • Do these conclusions apply for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families and the particular migrant groups in Australia? • Australia lucky that there is some policy commitment to early intervention and family support.

  9. Ilan Katz Social Policy Research Centre Ilan.katz@unsw.edu.au www.sprc.unsw.edu.au G2 Western Campus University of New South Wales Kensington 2052 NSW, Australia +61 2 9385 7810

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