Parental lessons may miss most in need

Dame Lesley Max. Photo / Christine Cornege

Thousands of New Zealand parents are going back to school to learn how to be better parents - but experts still do not know if the multiple programmes are reaching the parents who most need them.

All of the Government's main social ministries are now promoting their own parenting programmes aimed at curing social ills from juvenile delinquency to child abuse.

Prime Minister John Key has introduced at least four new programmes, including the first experiment with court-directed parenting education for teen parents and parents of youth offenders under the "Fresh Start" initiative which took effect in October.

Taxpayer-funded spending on parenting education across the Ministries of Social Development, Education and Health now totals about $72 million a year - an average of just over $100 for each of the country's 642,000 families with children.

But Dame Lesley Max, who brought the "Hippy" programme to New Zealand and chairs a sector group called the Parenting Council, worries the money is still not reaching the neediest parents.

"The funds available are soaked up by the middle class," she says. "There is a worry that they are not reaching Maori and Pacific and low-income families."

Although she is on the Social Development Ministry's family services council, she says there was no consultation when Education Minister Anne Tolley decided in 2009 to introduce an American parenting programme called "The Incredible Years" to 12,000 parents of disruptive children by 2014.

Nor was the council consulted about the Fresh Start initiative, a National Party 2008 election promise which includes 700 places a year for court-ordered parenting programmes.

The confusing maze of programmes has grown with each government's new answer for social problems.

One of the oldest programmes, Parents As First Teachers dates from a 1990 election promise by former National leader Jim Bolger, based on an American programme.

Educators visit families for the first three years of a child's life to offer parenting education and to link them to other services if needed.

Although there are still 6000 families in this programme, it has been eclipsed since 1998 by another American import, Family Start, which aims to address the wider needs of at-risk families and now accounts for almost half the total parenting spend.

This programme, in turn, has been under a cloud since it emerged that the Hawaiian programme on which it was based did not reduce child abuse.

Labour Prime Minister Helen Clark's main parenting innovation, "Strategies for Kids: Information for Parents" (SKIP), was introduced in 2004 to promote non-physical discipline, hoping to avoid a divisive showdown over moves to ban smacking. It still gets $3.7 million a year for local initiatives such as family "fun days".

Six "family service centres", funded by the Bolger government from 1993 and run by Dame Lesley's Great Potentials Foundation, aim to be "one-stop shops" for health, education and parenting help in low-income communities such as Papakura, Huntly and Opotiki.

They were superseded in the Clark years by more narrowly focused "Early Years service hubs" aiming to co-ordinate services to families with high-needs preschoolers.

There are now 13 "hubs" from Whangarei to Dunedin.

The Social Development Ministry also funds Dame Lesley's Hippy programme at 27 low-income sites and a home-based preschool parenting programme run by the Maori Women's Welfare League, Whanau Toki I Te Ora.

Alongside all of these, the Health Ministry pays for Plunket's parenting education and 24-hour parent helpline as part of its $61 million a year Well Child contract.

All these have now been complemented by the Incredible Years and related Education Ministry projects to deal with misbehaving children in preschools and primary schools, and from this year, a "Triple P" Positive Parenting Programme to be piloted by the Health Ministry in three regions.