Warwickshire’s Stepped Approach to Parenting Support

Warwickshire’s Family and Relationship Support team serves approximately 600,000 residents across 763 square miles and five districts/boroughs. To make support easy to access at scale, the county runs a universal first line of evidence-based workshops and programmes within a Stepped Approach, facilitated by experienced staff and free to all Warwickshire parents and carers.

The offer includes programmes from The Centre for Emotional Health, which focus on developing skills like empathy, positive discipline, and self-awareness so families can build secure relationships, respond to feelings, and embed supportive routines at home. The emphasis at Warwickshire County Council is on helping families as early as possible and making “supporting healthy relationships everyone’s business.”

Early on, the team saw a gap: programmes alone were a big commitment for many parents and carers, especially if they weren’t sure what a course involved. To lower the barrier and build trust, Warwickshire introduced two-hour taster workshops on key topics which draw on core concepts from The Nurturing Programme and other complementary approaches.

These short sessions let parents meet practitioners, sample the content, and understand the offer before deciding to commit to a longer programme.

The Family and Relationships Support Team was established in September 2020 and due to the COVID-19 pandemic began delivering online. Face-to-face delivery returned in December 2021 and now, Warwickshire runs a hybrid offer with both in-person and virtual cohorts.

Workshops such as Understanding Children’s Behaviour, Boundaries & Rules, Routines, Sleep and Understanding Your Teenager sit alongside The Nurturing Programme (10 weeks) and Talking Teens (4 weeks). These workshops act as a platform to recruit parents to longer programmes and help them feel comfortable accessing support. Warwickshire saw sign-ups and retention rise sharply once these workshops became the low-pressure, first step.

Alongside targeted support, Warwickshire also used its Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) grant funding to build a universal pathway. Agencies across education, early years, health and social care receive full-day CPD training to recognise and respond to harmful parental conflict. From September 2025, bespoke half-day training extends to private, voluntary, and community-sector organisations to broaden the skills-base around working with families and to embed shared practice.

For families, an introductory workshop helps parents recognise how conflict and communication patterns affect children and offers skills to break unhelpful cycles. Those wanting more depth can then move into Keeping Your Child in Mind, which provides comprehensive support around managing difficult feelings, creating appropriate expectations, communicating clearly, and setting boundaries. A toolkit supports 1-to-1 and targeted group work where needed.

Warwickshire faced familiar hurdles; promotion and recruitment, a wide geography, childcare, and post-COVID capacity. For example, many parents could be unsure what a “parenting programme” involves or worry it would be time-heavy or judgmental, while the county’s large radius of service users could mean travel, evening transport and venue availability could limit attendance. Childcare needs would add pressure, and staff backlogs could result in reduced delivery bandwidth especially after the pandemic.

To address this, Warwickshire’s promotion includes refreshed resources and monthly webinars for families and professionals where they talk through their offer and how to book a place on a programme. They also maintain attendance at parents’ evenings and network events, where they have now started to show The Centre for Emotional Health’s video on what emotional health is. To reduce barriers for their range of families, the team continues to run a blended model by aiming for one in-person and one virtual group per term for each programme.

For capacity-building purposes, the service trained Family Support Workers to co-deliver (one Parent Coach + one Family Support Worker) and expanded to four FTE Parent Coaches and a Parenting Specialist in the team. A skills audit informed further Nurturing Programme training for Family Support Workers to support the wellbeing of staff as well as families they work with, creating a shared ethos and language of emotional health and relational care.

213 parents took part in The Centre for Emotional Health’s programmes through the Warwickshire parenting offer.
Based on the BPSES (Brief Parenting Self-Efficacy Scale), parents’ overall confidence increased by an average of 1.73 points after completing a programme. Parents experienced the largest average improvement (17% increase from starting scores) 

in the statement: 

The things I do make a difference to my child’s behaviour.”

From end-of-programme feedback:

• 95% of responding parents felt more confident as a parent
• 95% said they understand their child more
• 98% would recommend the programme to other parents.

Many described taking part in a programme as life-changing and a recurring theme was more reflective, relationship-centred parenting. Parents spoke about communication being key, whether together or separated, and shifting from “fixing” behaviour to considering how adults can better understand children.

I have learnt that too much emphasis is put on children's behaviour and not on how the adults in their lives are supporting them.”

I have learnt about types of conflict; I have learnt more about my parenting style.”

Practitioners echo the tone: training was described as calm, practical and well-resourced, and there has been praise for patient, friendly facilitation:

Love The Centre for Emotional Health's practical approach. Can’t wait to facilitate to teens’ families.”

The Stepped Approach that starts with short workshops and builds to deeper, evidence-based programmes like The Nurturing Programme has helped Warwickshire turn early help into a universal offer. Clear pathways make seeking support feel safe and doable, cross-team and cross-agency training builds capacity and keeps delivery steady, and a single universal RPC pathway reduces stigma and keeps relationships at the centre. The hybrid delivery model ensures no family is out of reach.

Collectively, these choices bring The Centre for Emotional Health’s established evidence to life across Warwickshire settings; resulting in earlier access, stronger engagement and skills that stick, with parents describing greater confidence and closer relationships at home.

Sam Wilkinson - Team Manager Early Support and Family and Relationships Team / RPC Coordinator, Warwickshire County Council

Email: [email protected]