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Abstract
Understanding Your Child's Behaviour (UYCB) is a 10-week parenting programme based on the Solihull Approach model, which has previously been shown to reduce problematic behaviour in children. This study examined the views of 236 parents of all literacy levels who attended 37 UYCB programmes provided by the Solihull Borough's children's workforce between 2005 and 2010. Simple weekly evaluation forms were used to gather both quantitative and qualitative data. Ninety-five per cent of parents reported that they found the group relaxing, 89% found it very effective at helping them make changes to their parenting and 88% found it very helpful for understanding their children. Qualitative themes demonstrate that the group enables parents to implement the three cornerstone theories of the Solihull Approach: containment; reciprocity and (sensitive) behaviour management in their parenting. The study also supports the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) guidelines that parenting programmes should be eight to 12 session long.
Key words
Solihull Approach; Understanding Your Child's Behaviour; parenting group; parental satisfaction; parent-child relationship.
Community Practitioner, 2012; 85(5): 29-33.
No potential competing interests declared
Introduction
The Solihull Approach Parenting Group, 'Understanding Your Child's Behaviour' (UYCB), aims to help parents with universal to complex issues concerning children aged O to 18 years by enhancing the parent-child relationship and promoting a reflective style of parenting. The Solihull Approach Douglas, 2012} has used the psychotherapeutic concept of containment (Bion, 1959), combined with the child neurodevelopment concept of reciprocity (Brazelton, 1974), and learning theory's behaviour management as the basis for developing a relationship model that focuses on providing a containing experience for parents so that they are able to be calm, process emotions and retain the capacity to think.
This, in turn, enables parents to be more in tune with their child's feelings and developmental needs so that, where necessary, they can use individualised, sensitive and appropriate behaviour management strategies with their children. Douglas (2010) argues that combining these theories contributes to positive emotional and mental wellbeing in both the parent and child.
Systematic reviews have consistently shown that parenting programmes are effective in improving behaviour problems in young children (Barlow, 1999; Barlow et al, 2010; Barlow and StewartBrown, 2000; Gibbs et al, 2003), children with conduct disorder (Dretzke et al, 2009) and...