Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme: The Clondalkin Partnership Study in Ireland

This study was conducted by the Clondalkin Partnership; Incredible Years Initiative in Clondalkin, Ireland.

Children in schools within disadvantaged areas have been found to have emotional disorders of a much more severe nature. Emotional and behavioural problems develop in a dynamic social context within the child?s home, school and community and exert a significant toll on children and young people. The research suggests that one of the most effective means of tackling these problems lies in family-based approaches. Generally, these are targeted at pre-school or slightly older children with conduct or emotional and behavioural problems, with the parent(s) or primary carere as the central focus of the intervention.

The Clondalkin Partnership began the implementation of the Incredible Years (IY) programme in 2004 in order to create a community-based solution to a national problem. The IY BASIC Parent Training program was the first to be implemented on a trial basis. The pilot study reported here was designed and implemented by staff at the Clondalkin Partnership in part collaboration with researchers at NUI Maynooth in order to assess the overall effectiveness of the IY BASIC Parent Training Program.

Conclusion

The quantitative findings in this study indicate important positive changes in many different aspects of the children?s behaviour, which were supported and amplified by the qualitative data. The benefits accrued by parents ? both personally and in terms of their improved relationships with their child ? as well as their overwhelmingly positive views of the IY program itself, were important and recurring themes identified from the qualitative analysis. Thus, the overall results provide convincing evidence for the effectiveness of the IY program, albeit within the context of a small, localised pilot study without the inclusion of a control group. The results also suggest that any future implementation of the entire IY program (with all three of its training components) would be very well received in Clondalkin.

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