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Incredible Years Preschool - Basic parent training programme

Incredible Years Preschool - Basic parent training programme

Overview

Level: Enhanced

Impact Assessments:

Reaction

Learning

Behaviour

Results

To train staff to deliver Incredible Years parenting groups to parents / carers of 3-6 year-olds who have elevated levels of social, emotional and behavioural need.

This is a 3-day in person training delivered by an accredited Incredible Years Mentor.

Is there a cost for this learning resource? :

No

Has this resource been accredited or endorsed by any organisation? :

NHS Education for Scotland (NES) endorse and commission this training via the Psychology of Parenting Project (PoPP)

Training model:

To deliver this training, staff must be an accredited Incredible Years Mentor who has undertaken a rigorous proficiency check process.

Learning is through instructive presentation, video demonstration and rehearsal of group skills.

Within the PoPP context, the training is aimed at staff within Community Planning Partnerships (CPP) who work with children and families in the early years, who can be given protected time to deliver the groups, such as Early Years Practitioners & Family Support Staff.

 

Staff capacity and time commitment:

This is a 3-day, in person, face-to-face training for staff who can commit to deliver the 14-week long parenting groups in their local area, as well as engage with an Incredible Years Mentor to ensure consistent, high-quality delivery of the parenting groups.

Author/developer:

Professor Carolyn Webster-Stratton

Contact for Further Development

Further information is hosted on NES - Early Intervention Framework - Incredible Years Preschool basic programme

Please contact psychology@nes.scot.nhs.uk for more information about PoPP.

Link to resource

Quality dimensions

Usability

Content and Objectives of the Incredible Years Early Childhood BASIC Parent Training Programs (Ages 3–6):   

Program One: Strengthening Children’s Social Skills, Emotional Regulation and School Readiness Skills

Part 1:

Child-Directed Play    

  • Recognizing children’s capabilities and needs
  • Adjusting to children’s temperament and activity level
  • Building children’s self-esteem and self-concept
  • Learning about normal developmental milestones
  • Avoiding the criticism trap
  • Understanding the importance of adult attention to promote positive child behaviors - “Attention Principle”
  • Building a positive relationship through child-directed play

Part 2: Academic and Persistence Coaching

  • Descriptive commenting promotes children’s language skills and builds children’s self-confidence and frustration tolerance
  • Academic coaching increases children’s school readiness
  • Using “persistence coaching” to strengthen children’s ability to be focussed, calm and persist with an activity
  • Learning how to coach preschool reading skills
  • The “modeling principle”—by parents avoiding the use of critical statements and demands and substituting positive polite language, children model and learn more positive communication and to be respectful
  • Understanding children’s developmental drive for independence

Part 3: Social and Emotion Coaching             

Using emotion coaching to promote children’s emotional literacy

  • Combining persistence coaching with emotion coaching to strengthen child’s self-regulation skills
  • Learning how to prompt and model emotion language
  • Social coaching, one-on-one, builds child’s social skills (e.g., sharing, taking turns)
  • Knowing how to engage in fantasy play to promote social skills and perspective taking
  • Helping parents understand how they can coach several children in positive peer interactions
  • Understanding how to model, prompt, and praise social skills
  • Understanding developmental stages of play
  • Learning how to apply coaching principles in other set- tings (e.g., meal times, grocery store trips, bath times, etc.,)

 

Program Two: Using Praise and Incentives to Encourage Cooperative Behavior

Part 1:The Art of Effective Praise & Encouragement

  • Labeling praise
  • Give to Get” principle—for adults and children
  • Modeling self-praise
  • Resistance to praise—the difficulties from self and others to accept praise
  • Promoting positive self-talk
  • Using specific encouraging statements versus nonspecific
  • Getting and giving support through praise
  • Avoiding praising only perfection
  • Recognizing social and academic behaviors that need praise
  • Building children’s self-esteem through praise and encouragement
  • Understanding “proximal praise” and “differential attention”

Part 2: Motivating Children Through Incentives        

  • Understanding value of spontaneous rewards & celebrations
  • Understanding the difference between rewards and bribes
  • Recognizing when to use the “first-then” principle
  • Understanding how to “shape” behaviors
  • Providing ways to set up sticker and chart systems with children
  • Understanding how to develop incentive programs that are developmentally appropriate
  • Understanding ways to use tangible rewards for problems such as dawdling, not dressing, noncompliance, fighting with siblings, picky eating, messy rooms, not going to bed, and toilet training
  • Importance of reinforcing/refueling oneself and others

Program Three: Effective Limit Setting

Part 1: Rules, Responsibilities and Routines

  • Importance of routines and predictable schedules for children
  • Clear and predictable household rules offer children safety and reduce misbehaviors
  • Establishing clear and predictable routines for separat- ing from children and greeting them, going to bed and morning routines
  • Starting children learning about family responsibilities
  • Helping children learn family household rules

Part 2: Effective Limit Setting

  • Identifying important household rules
  • Understanding ways to give more effective commands
  • Avoiding unnecessary commands
  • Avoiding unclear, vague and negative commands
  • Providing children with positive alternatives/choices
  • Understanding when to use the “when-then” command
  • Recognizing the importance of warnings, reminders and redirection
  • When possible, give children transition time
  • “Politeness Principle”
  • Praise children’s compliance to commands

 

Program Four: Handling Misbehavior

Part 1: Limit Setting and Follow Through     

  • Understand the importance of distractions coupled with ignore
  • Understand the importance of consistency and follow through by parents
  • Maintain self-control and use calm down strategies
  • Understanding that testing is normal behavior
  • Use ignore technique consistently and avoid arguing about limits

Part 2: Avoiding and Ignoring Misbehaviour   

  • Understanding how to effectively ignore
  • Understanding concept of “Selective Attention” and “At- tention Principle”
  • Repeated learning trials—negative behavior is a sign child needs some new learning opportunities
  • Identifying appropriate behavior to ignore
  • Keep filling up bank account with play, coaching, praise and incentives
  • Practicing self-control and calm down strategies

Part 3: Time Out to Calm Down          

  • Learning how to teach children calm down strategies
  • Explaining Time Out to a preschool-age child
  • Using Time Out respectfully and selectively for destructive behavior or severely oppositional children
  • Following through when a child resists Time Out
  • Helping victim of aggressive act
  • Continuing to strengthen prosocial behaviors (positive opposite)
  • Parents practicing positive self-talk and anger management strategies

Part 4: Other Consequences 

  • Learning about developmentally appropriate logical consequences
  • Understanding the importance of new learning trials
  • Understanding the importance of brief, immediate consequences
  • Avoiding power struggles that reinforce misbehavior through lack of follow through
  • Determining age appropriate natural and logical consequences

Part 5: Teaching Children to Problems Solve Through Stories and Games

  • Understanding that games and stories can be used to help children begin to learn problem-solving skills
  • Appreciating the developmental nature of children’s ability to problem solve
  • Strengthening a child’s beginning empathy skills or ability to understand a problem from another person’s point of view
  • Recognizing why aggressive and shy children need to learn these skills
  • Learning how to help children think about the emotional and behavioral consequences to proposed solutions
  • Understanding the importance of validating children’s feelings
  • Learning to model problem solving for children     

 

The whole programme is highly operationalised so that the groups are delivered consistently.               

Supports

Supports - Workforce

For CPPs accessing the training through PoPP, supports are provided around identifying practitioners for training, administrative processes and data processes, and access to ongoing consultation sessions from an Incredible Years mentor. Training resources are provided for attendees and manuals for delivery of groups.

 

Outwith PoPP details of supports offered from Incredible Years can be found here:

NES - Incredible Years Preschool Basic Programme

Supports - Technology

NES collate and analyse training and clinical outcome data to inform and drive the implementations of the group delivery.

Supports - Administrative

Training resources are provided for attendees and manuals for delivery of the parenting groups.

Supports - Financial

NES covers all training costs, provides all training and delivery materials, data support, as well as access to consultations from an Incredible Years mentor.

Evidence base

Training is delivered using the same theories guiding the Incredible Years interventions, it is based on social learning theory, modelling, theories of child development and behavioural theory. Learning is through instructive presentation, video demonstration and rehearsal of group skills. 

 

Evidence Base for Incredible Years Preschool Basic is captured here: guide book - Incredible years preschool basic

and here:

NES - Incredible Years Preschool Basic Programme

Impact assessments

Reaction

Evaluation forms are completed at the end of training.

Learning

Knowledge and confidence ratings are collected from staff before and after the training

Behaviour

Learning is through instructive presentation, video demonstration and rehearsal of group skills. Incredible Years Mentors track adherence to the therapy model by delivery staff.

Results

Weekly feedback data is collected from those attending the parenting groups. An evaluation is collected from all parents at the end of the intervention. Clinical outcome measures are completed by each attending parent / carer before and after the groups, which measures the childs social, emotional and behavioural difficultes. The data is collated and analysed by NES. Data collected to date demonstrates the intervention's positive impact on child outcomes, consistent with the evidence base. Around 60% of those children, whose parents complete the pre and post measures, and start in the high risk range, moving out of this range by the end of the group.

KSF dimension information in relation to the learning resource

Child Development and Attachment

Mental Health in Children, Young People and their Families

Engagement, Containment and Communication

Identification and Understanding of Need

Supports and Interventions

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