The Centre for Emotional Health

Have you wondered what #emotionalhealth is? Why not watch our 2 minute animation video created with CC Animation Studio to find out 👉 📽 📽

Parentkind’s recent survey found that 47% of parents say screen time causes arguments within their households and more than a third of parents say their child is missing out on sleep because they spend too much time on screens. One of England's largest school academy trusts recently reported that it was set to phase out access to phones during the school day, stating that “teaching and learning, behaviour and children’s mental health are all impacted negatively by mobile phones". With this issue continuing to be discussed and debated, our Education Lead, Luce Carter reflects on what we can do to help ourselves and children form healthy relationships with phones and the digital world within them in our latest blog 👇 https://lght.ly/nf0kfi0

Relationships. This was a word that was repeatedly used at a conference our Head of Business Development Alison recently attended - the National Centre for Family Hubs conference in London “Shaping the Future of Family Support”. In the work of Family Hubs, a key relationship is the one between professionals and the parents and carers they support. Unfortunately, for some, contact with a ‘professional’ can be uncomfortable or perhaps triggering due to past experience, and this can make them reluctant to engage. In our training for professionals here at The Centre for Emotional Health, we pay as much attention to the “how” of parent support as the “what”. The way that professionals communicate and behave with those they work with can have a significant impact. The look and feel of communications, the physical space, the welcome and the ongoing respectful and empathic interactions modelled by the professionals help to create a safe space for parents and carers. This, together with a partnership rather than directive approach, enables professionals to build emotionally healthy relationships with those they support. Professionals know the parents and carers they work with better than we do, and parents and carers know far more about their children and young people than professionals. If you’d like to find out more about our approach to equipping professionals to work in a relational way that helps parents to develop their self-awareness, empathy and self-regulation, and helps them to build and maintain positive relationships with their children and with other adults, get in touch. We’d love to talk to you!

Relationships. This was a word that was repeatedly used at a conference our Head of Business Development Alison recently attended - the National Centre for Family Hubs conference in London “Shaping the Future of Family Support”. In the work of Family Hubs, a key relationship is the one between professionals and the parents and carers they support. Unfortunately, for some, contact with a ‘professional’ can be uncomfortable or perhaps triggering due to past experience, and this can make them reluctant to engage. In our training for professionals here at The Centre for Emotional Health, we pay as much attention to the “how” of parent support as the “what”. The way that professionals communicate and behave with those they work with can have a significant impact. The look and feel of communications, the physical space, the welcome and the ongoing respectful and empathic interactions modelled by the professionals help to create a safe space for parents and carers. This, together with a partnership rather than directive approach, enables professionals to build emotionally healthy relationships with those they support. Professionals know the parents and carers they work with better than we do, and parents and carers know far more about their children and young people than professionals. If you’d like to find out more about our approach to equipping professionals to work in a relational way that helps parents to develop their self-awareness, empathy and self-regulation, and helps them to build and maintain positive relationships with their children and with other adults, get in touch. We’d love to talk to you!

We want to get better at measuring the outcomes that matter for parents and their children. We’re doing this by embedding parents, research, and collaboration at the heart of the organisation. For example, last week Robin visited a parent group three months after they finished a 10-week Nurturing Programme at Manchester Council. In between cookie breaks, they talked about what changed for the parents, and whether the questionnaires we’re using capture information that feels meaningful. Parents shared how difficult it was to answer probing questions honestly, especially at the start of their journey. We want to do better at listening to parents, and so we have invited parents and parent group leaders to sit on our Research Advisory Group. In fact, parents and group leaders now make up a majority of the group. We have re-booted our Local Authority Learning Partnership forum, where we will work closely with ten local authorities to improve the quality and power of our impact and outcome measurement activities. If you are a parent, practitioner, or local authority and you want to help with our impact measuring journey, get in touch with Robin at ✉️ evidence@emotionalhealth.org.uk

We talk a lot about young children but one of our other most popular programmes is Talking Teens, aimed at parents of teenagers. Having the confidence and skills to manage the everyday interactions with teenagers is important for parents’ confidence and emotional health. Over half of parents who started our Talking Teens programme would not describe their relationship with their teenager as positive. Part of the problem is that parents don’t have the knowledge or skills to understand their teenager. At the start of a Talking Teens programme, 69% of parents didn’t know about teenage development, and 78% didn’t have strategies to manage conflict. This dropped to 9% and 17% after the programme (Life with your teenager questionnaire, n=310). Giving parents the skills and confidence to understand their children works. After taking part, 62% of parents saw an improvement in their relationship with their teenager, with a big majority now describing their relationship as positive. Want to find out more about our teenage programmes? Head to our website today.

We know that everyone needs good emotional health for themselves as individuals and to enable them to contribute to creating an emotionally healthy culture wherever they are. The Nurturing Programme helps to develop the understanding, skills and ability to lead an emotionally healthy life, to build resilience, empathy and self-esteem, and to support positive relationships. It is being used by an increasing number of local authority services, the voluntary sector, health, Family Hubs, schools, prisons, faith organisations and corporate teams, supporting us in our mission to promote an approach to life and relationships that equips and supports individuals, families, communities and organisations to be emotionally healthy. If you’d like to know more about The Nurturing Programme approach, please get in touch with us at ✉️ hello@emotionalhealth.org.uk If you’re interested in running Nurturing Programme parent groups, our 4-day Parent Group Leader training is taking place in 6 locations between January and April next year. Head to our website to find out more.

We routinely measure a transformative improvement in parents mental wellbeing and their children’s social skills and difficulties. Alongside improvement in their own emotional health skills, we want to know that parents have the confidence and skills to make positive practical changes across different areas of their home and family lives. To find out, we worked with local authorities to ask parents taking part in our programmes about changes in their home and family lives using Oxford University’s Parenting Our Young Children Questionnaire. Parents of children with additional needs who attended a 10-week Nurturing Programme reported big changes. 67% of parents said that they more regularly praised good behaviour, 97% said they spoke calmly more often, and 81% said they stuck to family rules more. Overall, 97% of parents reported a positive change.

We believe that improving the skills of the parents around children is key to improving child outcomes. We worked with local authorities across England and Wales to measure child outcomes before and after our 10-week Nurturing Programme. They asked almost a thousand parents about their children’s difficulties and social skills. Difficulties scores can be grouped into average, raised, high and very high. More than half of the children of parents starting a 10-week Nurturing Programme had very high levels of difficulties. Parents reported improvements in their children’s social skills (week 1; x̄=6.08, week 10; x̄=6.89, n=997), and a decrease in difficulties (week 1; x̄=19.7, week 10; x̄=17.9, n=906). This is a significant improvement. The biggest change was seen in the children with the highest starting level of difficulties, where over half of children starting with high or very high difficulties (week 1; x̄=23.1, n=609) improved by at least a whole category (week 10; x̄=20.5). All this when we don’t work directly with children. These results show how central parents’ emotional health and mental wellbeing are to improving child outcomes.

Good emotional health is being aware of, understanding and managing our whole range of emotions. Positive relationships support us to build healthy beliefs about ourselves and others. Good emotional health can protect against poor mental wellbeing. We work with local authorities to ask parents about their mental wellbeing when they start a programme, again when they finish, and in some cases again three months after they finish. The average parent started with mental wellbeing score far below the UK average (Warwick-Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Score, x̄ =44.1, n= 1040), but finished with a mental wellbeing above the UK average (x̄=51.2, UK average=50). Parents maintained this improvement three months later (x̄=52.3, n=161). The effect was even greater for parents with the greatest need. Over 70% of parents starting with ‘low’ mental wellbeing ended up with ‘high’ or ‘average’ mental wellbeing. Over 85% of those maintained or continued to increase their improved mental wellbeing. The Nurturing Programme can be transformative for parents’ mental wellbeing.