The total amount of funding allocated to parenting skills programs and support - Find a freedom of information request

1. What is the total amount of funding allocated to parenting skills programs and support within your council for the last fiscal year for which data is available?

2. How many staff members does the council currently employ to work in the area of parenting skills and support?

3. Does the council offer any of the following parenting programs: Triple P, Incredible Years, Solihull Approach, Nurture?

4. What is the total expenditure for digital parenting resources within your council for the last fiscal year for which data is available?

5. How many parents received parenting skills support from your council in the last year for which data is available?

I can confirm that the information requested is held by Lincolnshire County Council. I have detailed below the information that is being released to you.

1. Under the Family Hubs budget, £74,825 was allocated to parenting support between April 2022 to March 2023. There is no other dedicated budget for parenting skills programs however there are locality teams who do work to support parenting as part of their roles. In particular, this includes Early Help Workers and Family Health Workers for example. Any additional materials identified by locality needs are purchased within the wider locality budget.

2. There are a range of roles employed by the Council which focus predominately in the area of parenting skills and support within Children’s Services.

This includes, for example:

• Family Health Workers – employed as part of the Children’s Health 0-19 Service, working under the supervision of a registered Health Visitor (HV) or Children and Young People’s nurse (CYPN), to support within the capacity of health and development, and behaviour support. This parenting skills and support would mostly be part of an individual offer as it is not a mandated element of the Healthy Child Programme. There are 28.8FTE Family Health Workers in post.

• Early Years Practitioners – employed to work in Lincolnshire’s Children’s Centres to assist in the efficient and effective delivery of the Early Years provision in the locality to contribute to improved early years educational outcomes for vulnerable children with a focus on school readiness, transition and Early years inclusion / SEND. There are 19 EYP staff members in post which includes full time and part time workers, and this equates to approximately 15 FTE.

• Early Help Workers – employed to act as a key worker for families, including direct work with children and young people as well as delivering parenting interventions to improve outcomes for families across a range of needs including those set out in the DCLG Troubled Families Programme and Lincolnshire’s Families Outcome Plan. Across the County there are approximately 143.1 FTE, broken down by locality: Boston and South Holland 36, East Lindsay 30.5, Lincoln and West Lindsey 37 and North and South Kesteven 39.6.

3. The Council offers the Solihull Approach and Solihull Antenatal parenting programmes currently with intention of offering Incredible Years and baby Triple P in the future as part of the Family Hubs programme implementation.

4. As part of the Family Hubs programme implementation, 2 new multi-user licences have recently been purchased from Solihull to offer online courses for parents and for professionals. This did not come from the last fiscal year but from the current 2023/24 fiscal year

5. Between April 2022 and March 2023, there were a total of 1660 attendances on parenting courses delivered by Early Help Workers. As highlighted in previous questions, parents/carers are supported with parenting skills and support from a range of roles also so taking this into account, this number is much higher