This report was published by National Quality Improvement Network.

HERE’S HOW THE AUTHORS DESCRIBE THIS REPORT:

For a long time in the UK, there has been an ongoing national and local debate about how to engage families in child and adult services. Recent and current government initiatives set out an agenda for engaging families. A key policy driver has been to ‘narrow the gap’ to improve the life chances of poor children.

As Feinstein (2003) has noted ‘there is already a social class differential at 22 months’ between the children from disadvantaged backgrounds and the children from advantaged backgrounds in the UK. This gap widens as children get older. This is not the case with our European neighbours and presents us with an immediate and very real challenge. We know that parental involvement is key. This article grapples with the following question: how do we best encourage and support successful and sustained engagement with families to support them in their parenting role?