Research and analysis

Reducing Parental Conflict Challenge Fund: learning from the first phase

Published 6 April 2021

Applies to England, Scotland and Wales

Views expressed in this report are not necessarily those of the Department for Work and Pensions or any other government department.

Acknowledgements

The Challenge Fund programme management team would like to thank all those who have contributed to the development, delivery and learning from this programme, particularly representatives from both the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice who have engaged throughout. Thanks go to Rachel Brackwell, Russell Peacock and Angela Swan at Ecorys and Nissa Ramsay at Think Social Tech for their work on the grant programme, and to all the grant recipients for their thoughtful reflections on their experiences.

This report was authored by Andrew Hitches-Davies, Kate Merriam, Malika Shah and Kate Smith at Ecorys, Pamela Park at Family Lives, and Katie Connolly.

Executive summary

In 2018, Ecorys, in partnership with Family Lives, was commissioned to manage the Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Challenge Fund. The primary aim of the fund was to gather learning on what works to reduce parental conflict. Ten organisations received grants to deliver interventions across two streams of work: projects providing support to particular cohorts of disadvantaged families (Support for Disadvantaged Families, or SDF, projects); and projects developing new ways to digitally engage families in conflict (Digital Support projects).

This report collates and analyses the learning gathered by funded organisations during the first phase of delivery, between April 2019 and March 2020. Projects developed theories of change and quarterly learning reports, which encouraged reflective practice throughout.

SDF projects delivered activities across four key themes: mediation; testing proven programmes which are new to the UK; testing proven programmes with specific target groups; and adapting existing parenting programmes to focus on parental conflict. Analysis of the projects’ learning highlighted a number of key findings related to these delivery models.

For example, mediation projects offered additional elements to a traditional mediation model such as counselling and including children in the process, which proved to be effective in enhancing the intervention. These projects found that their interventions reduced court applications and made associated savings in the justice system, as well as improving parental communication. For those testing proven programmes in new settings, challenges sometimes arose in relation to maintaining fidelity to the existing model. Where projects were able to be flexible and introduce adaptations, there was greater success; fully manualised programmes proved more challenging to integrate into new settings.

For all projects, success in engaging participants depended heavily on referral partners. Where existing relationships with partners were in place, projects had more success; for those working with new target groups, it was more challenging to establish referral pathways in the short time period for delivery. Projects also found that the recruitment of male practitioners supported the engagement of fathers and encouraged greater contribution from fathers during their participation.

A number of projects provided training for practitioners outside their own staff teams, encouraging a greater understanding of parental conflict. This not only helped to encourage referrals but leaves a legacy of support workers who are able to embed this learning in their own practice when working with families.

The projects delivering in the Digital Support strand of the fund generated a wealth of learning around approaches to engaging parents online. Projects found success in engaging parents on trusted channels; taking content to parents – as recommended in DWP’s own user research^{[footnote 1]} – generated the greatest number of parents reached and engaged. However, placing content on trusted channels meant that interventions were restricted by the architecture of those platforms, and the same issue also applied to analytics and targeted advertising. Indeed, the ethics related to parental privacy and data were challenging for the Digital Support projects, who noted that they had to compromise on the efficacy of targeted adverts in order to protect privacy on certain platforms.

Despite the significant differences in approach across each of the delivery strands, and indeed between the projects sitting within them, there were some areas of commonality. All projects reported that they would have liked greater integration with the wider RPC programme, although equally, most had benefited from engagement with the RPC programme’s Regional Integration Leads.

Both the SDF and Digital Support projects found that there was significant learning related to the lack of both parental and practitioner understanding of conflict. Projects providing training for practitioners found an increased level of understanding about the impact of conflict in families following training, and hope this will lead to improved practice being embedded in the wider landscape. Delineating between conflict and abuse was also a key issue in communication with practitioners. When working with parents, initiatives found it was vital to adapt the language and terminology used around conflict; echoing DWP’s user research, this is not a term that parents are familiar with. Indeed, using sensitive and positive language focused on improved communication and “working together as a team” was important to engage parents in the conversation. Finally, across both strands of the fund, initiatives found that children were a key motivator for engaging and continuing with support.

Most importantly, all projects reported that participants had shifted in their knowledge and understanding, becoming more aware of conflict and how it might impact on their children. Feedback and qualitative information from parents often highlighted that they had improved communication with their partners and that parents were taking messages about patterns of behaviour on board and actively trying to change them.

However, for Digital Support projects, a mixed-methods approach appears to be the most beneficial when working towards impactful behaviour change; for example, those producing video content noted that it was likely only selected stages of behaviour change (such as information and understanding) could be achieved.

Over 500 families have been directly supported in the first phase of delivery of the Challenge Fund through participation in programmes and accessing support. Almost 300 frontline professionals have received training and products produced by the Digital Support projects have been accessed over 840,000 times. This phase of delivery has produced a range of lessons which can contribute to improving parental conflict in the future. It has built on and developed the existing evidence base, although a number of questions remain to be answered, particularly around the specific needs of particular target groups.

1.0 Introduction

Ecorys, working in partnership with Family Lives, was commissioned to administer the Reducing Parental Conflict Challenge Fund on behalf of the Department for Work and Pensions in 2018.

This report presents learning from Phase One (1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020) of delivery of the Challenge Fund.

1.1 The need to reduce parental conflict

Parents play a critical role in giving children the experiences and skills they need to succeed. However, children who are exposed to parental conflict can suffer long-term harm. The Improving lives: Helping workless families^{[footnote 2]} policy paper included analysis showing exposure to frequent, intense and poorly resolved parental conflict can affect children’s:

• emotional and social development
• educational attainment
• later employability
• physical and mental health

Furthermore, the evidence review What works to enhance inter-parental relationships and improve outcomes for children^{[footnote 3]} demonstrated that children who are exposed to frequent, intense and poorly resolved parental conflict are at significant risk of experiencing poorer long term outcomes. Poor outcomes for children are damaging and costly, not only for individuals (children and parents) but also for the state, as extra support is needed through health care, education, social and employment services to mitigate these problems. Therefore, early intervention to improve the quality of the inter-parental relationship (whether parents are together or separated) has the potential to reduce cumulative costs across childhood, adolescence, and adulthood.

Concerningly, parental conflict is relatively widespread; where a child lives with both parents in the same household, 12% of children have at least one parent who reports relationship distress. This is exacerbated for vulnerable families – for example, children living in workless families are three times more likely to experience parental conflict than in families where both parents are in work.

In response to these findings, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) allocated up to £39 million for the Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Programme, which encourages local authorities across England to integrate services and approaches which address parental conflict into their local services for families.

The RPC programme aims to:

• work closely with local authorities and their partners across England, to support them to integrate services and approaches to reduce parental conflict into their local services for families
• fund training for frontline practitioners and strategic leaders in local areas
• build an evidence base by testing eight face-to-face interventions to reduce parental conflict in four contract package areas across England.
• deliver a joint £6 million package of support, developed with the Department for Health and Social Care and Public Health England, to improve the outcomes of children of alcohol-dependant parents
• work closely with the Early Intervention Foundation to build and share the evidence base

1.2 The Challenge Fund

The Challenge Fund sits within the wider RPC programme, and aims to fund innovative projects to gather learning on what works to reduce parental conflict in two streams of work: projects providing support to particular cohorts of disadvantaged families (referred to in this report as Support for Disadvantaged Families, or SDF, projects); and projects developing new ways to digitally engage families in conflict (referred to as Digital Support projects). Both streams aimed to build the evidence base by gathering learning where:

• there are currently no firm answers;
• parents are living in the same household or living separately; and
• conflict is below the threshold of domestic abuse

The Challenge Fund initially awarded £2.2 million in grants to ten organisations across the two strands of work. The ten organisations had 12 months to deliver their projects and a further three months to collate all learning and complete evaluation activity.

In March 2020 six of the Challenge Fund projects were invited to continue delivery for a further nine months (up to 31 December 2020). These projects have had to adapt delivery to meet the lockdown and social distancing requirements implemented because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

1.3 Learning from the Challenge Fund

The “test and learn” nature of the Challenge Fund has meant that gathering learning has been a key feature throughout. This process began at the launch of the Challenge Fund; grantees completed a theory of change for their interventions to focus attention on intended outcomes and impacts and the processes required to achieve them. They also completed a learning plan to determine how evidence for their projects could be gathered. Each quarter, projects completed a learning report alongside their grant monitoring; these have been reviewed and assimilated into quarterly reports for DWP.

Similarly, at the end of Phase One of the Challenge Fund projects were asked to complete a final learning report alongside their final report to the Department. This report presents an analysis of the information provided by the projects. The report first examines learning from the SDF strand, followed by learning from the Digital Support strand. This learning is then tied back to DWP’s Reducing parental conflict: digital discovery^{[footnote 4]} research in the fourth chapter. Finally, our thematic experts Pamela Park and Katie Connolly provide their reflections on the emerging evidence from the programme.

2.0 Learning from the Support for Disadvantaged Families projects

This chapter collates and analyses feedback from the seven projects providing support to disadvantaged families, as well as an eighth project which straddled both the SDF and Digital Support strands. The chapter first explores learning on the practicalities of project delivery, considering the types of target groups engaged as well as project delivery models. It then looks in more detail at the support provided to participants, outcomes and impacts, and participant experiences of support.

2.1 Overview of the SDF projects

The SDF strand aimed to test and learn from new or emerging approaches for face-to-face support, through activities to promote better integration or joining up of local services, or through targeted interventions for families. The next section provides an overview of the projects which were funded.

Support for Disadvantaged Families funded projects

Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families

The Anna Freud Centre aimed to adapt, deliver and evaluate Family Ties, a ‘Multi Family Group’ intervention aimed at reducing the impact of conflict on children that has proved successful in Europe, to test its success for families living in the UK.

The project aimed to improve parents’ understanding of the impact of conflict on their children and reduce exposure and involvement of children in parental conflict.

Hall Smith Whittingham Solicitors LLP

The aim of the project was to reduce the number of parents going to court or Child Maintenance Services by improving inter-parental communication and increasing engagement in mediation.

Hall Smith Whittingham provided legal information, referral to support services, advice on improving communication skills and counselling, alongside mediation to disadvantaged or workless parents.

The project also developed referral networks to mediation from local services that support disadvantaged families by providing training sessions about family mediation and updates.

Mediation Now

The aim of the project was to reduce parental conflict by refocusing parents’ awareness of their children’s needs through a restorative whole family approach to problem solving.

Mediation Now aimed to understand the impact of additional short family focussed mediation compared to standard specific mediation, and whether this directly reduced the need for court proceedings.

Child consultation was combined with family support in this initiative, allowing children to speak for themselves and for the whole family to agree on future arrangements for the children.

Oasis Project

This project aimed to test the effectiveness of the ‘Parents as Partners’ intervention for parents who have experienced drug and/or alcohol misuse. Parents as Partners is an evidence-based, specialist intervention for couples, which aims to strengthen their relationship.

Oasis Project also developed a fathers’ service to learn how best to engage fathers in preparation for longer-term support.

The project developed a network of frontline professions to share knowledge and best practice on the specific needs of fathers with substance misuse problems.

OnePlusOne

OnePlusOne aimed to support parents making the transition to parenting by testing an adapted version of a parenting intervention new to the UK (Couple Care and Coping Programme) online through the Baby Buddy app and the Click Relationships platform.

The initiative tested whether the combination of digital and practitioner support was effective in supporting new parents to cope and communicate better, and whether delivering this intervention digitally improves outcomes for parents in the transition to parenthood.

Relate

This project was aimed at parent-couples where one of the parents is in prison and due for release or has been released from prison within the past twelve months.

The initiative aims to reduce conflict between parents, improve family relationships and improve children’s wellbeing and behaviour, while the released prisoner reintegrates into the community and family life.

The project included face-to-face family assessments, co-parent counselling sessions and evaluation sessions. New referral routes and partnerships were established.

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM)

Empowering Parents, Empowering Communities (EPEC) is a parenting programme combining peer-led parenting groups with training, organisational support, and supervision.

The aim of this initiative was to develop a refined version of the EPEC programme – ‘Being a Parent Together’ (BAP-T) – specifically focused on the needs of socially disadvantaged parents at risk of conflict.

Tavistock Relationships

The aim of the project was to test Mentalization Based Therapy for parents from Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic (BAME) communities, with learning difficulties and / or mental health problems, who are experiencing conflict.

The intervention was to help parents reduce conflict by supporting them to focus on their own feelings and emotions and the feelings, emotions and needs of their partners and children.

As the Challenge Fund has progressed and learning has emerged, we have categorised the SDF projects in two ways in order to support our analysis. Firstly – as Table 1 shows – by creating typologies of the activities funded, and secondly, by type of target group, as shown in Table 2. These themes will be explored throughout this report.

Table 1: Typologies of RPC activity (SDF strand)

Mediation activities with families in conflict	Testing proven programmes which are new to the UK	Testing proven programmes with specific target groups	Adapting existing parenting programmes to focus on RPC
Hall Smith Whittingham	Anna Freud Centre	Oasis Project	South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM)
Mediation Now	OnePlusOne	Relate
		Tavistock Relationships

Table 2: Typologies of RPC target groups (SDF strand)

Target groups with specific characteristics or needs	Families at risk of conflict; lower level intervention	Families experiencing high levels of conflict	Separated families	Practitioners
Oasis Project	South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLAM)	Anna Freud Centre	Hall Smith Whittingham	Hall Smith Whittingham
Relate	OnePlusOne	Tavistock Relationships	Mediation Now	Oasis Project
Tavistock Relationships				OnePlusOne
				Relate
				Tavistock Relationships

2.2 Project delivery

2.2.1 Project approaches to gathering learning

Projects recognised the importance of gathering learning from their interventions in terms of contributing to the evidence base of what works to support families in conflict. This section of the report explores grantee approaches to learning – evaluative and otherwise – as well as some of the challenges and lessons learned throughout the process.

The process of gathering learning

The process of gathering learning had been an ongoing one which started at project initiation. Projects highlighted that they had consulted with a range of stakeholders in a variety of ways in order to maximise their understanding of fit with the local landscape, as well as the extent to which their intervention was meeting user needs. Oasis Project flagged that their project advisory group had been particularly useful in this respect, while Relate held a multi-agency event for practitioners to come together. Others, such as SLAM, formalised consultation with delivery staff through pilot site reviews or staff supervision sessions.

Most projects commissioned external evaluations, primarily from universities or independent consultants. The four grantees which conducted internal evaluations (Action for Children, Anna Freud Centre, OnePlusOne and Tavistock Relationships) are larger organisations with internal research departments and appropriate expertise in house. In fact, in the case of the Anna Freud Centre it appeared that the evaluation may have benefitted from being conducted internally, giving researchers the ability to participate in weekly staff meetings for example, and also to learn from evaluative data on an ongoing basis. The organisation felt that this had contributed to the richness of the data collected.

All organisations utilised pre- and post- intervention assessments with participants, and for the most part evaluations comprised mixed method approaches including reviews of data alongside primary research with stakeholders including those involved in the intervention. In several cases, evaluations looked at both process and outcomes, and Oasis Project noted that the evaluation specifically examined ‘what works for who and why’ to inform future project development.

Challenges and lessons learned

Collecting data from service users was challenging for many projects. For some, this was a logistical issue; parents sometimes arrived at sessions late so did not have time to complete forms or missed sessions resulting in incomplete datasets. Finding the most appropriate time to ask parents to complete their post-intervention surveys was also challenging, particularly for the mediation projects where it was not always clear which meeting would be the final meeting – it was not uncommon for one parent to decide not to return, for example. Both mediation projects highlighted that they had tried various approaches to gathering post-intervention data with sometimes limited success; Mediation Now flagged that phone calls and emails had particularly low response rates, while sending forms to participants with a stamped addressed envelope was more beneficial but still only resulted in 6% being returned. However, Hall Smith Whittingham had much greater success by offering voucher incentives for completed forms; of the 55 parents who engaged, 32 sent their questionnaires back.

Gathering data from children supported by mediation projects was also a challenge. For Mediation Now, the development of end-of-session forms using stickers had been successful, but gathering more detailed, unbiased data on outcomes for children was impossible to do without parental involvement. The project recognises that this information is important but struggled to find an appropriate solution; the short-term nature of the intervention meant that bringing children back into the office for evaluation felt disproportionate.

While engagement of participants will be explored later in this report, it was clear that where there were difficulties recruiting this had a knock-on impact on data collection, and thus learning. This could potentially be a barrier to iterative project development.

However, tapping into stakeholder knowledge – both internal and external – proved useful for projects, and a number reported that gathering feedback from staff had been important for iterative learning related to project delivery. This was deemed particularly important for those testing existing programmes in new settings to ensure intervention fidelity. External stakeholder consultation had also been vital in terms of sharing learning and developing approaches to delivery, and this included the guidance that external evaluators had given on approaches to data collection and the development of tools and materials. However, Hall Smith Whittingham reported that the short delivery period and the related need to launch the intervention quickly meant their intervention commenced before their evaluator was commissioned. As such, the evaluator had not been able to feed into data collection approaches from the outset and their adjustments meant that there was an incomplete data set for the intervention cohort. Of course, the timeframe for the Challenge Fund also provides a barrier to any longer-term learning on outcomes for participants.

Finally, Relate, one of the projects delivering services for a specific target group, highlighted that they had attempted to develop a service user forum, but this proved logistically challenging. They also found that existing community forums for the target group were overly researched by other organisations and thus had ‘consultation fatigue’.

Impact of COVID-19 on learning

The COVID-19 virus and related lockdown measures had an impact on many projects’ ability to collect end-to-end data for their participants, both parents and practitioners alike. It has also impacted on other aspects of learning; a stakeholder focus group has been postponed, and it has proved difficult for those delivering manualised programmes to adhere to prescribed models. This will ultimately challenge the projects’ ability to understand how the model translates to a UK-based setting or a setting with alternative target groups.

2.2.2 Project development

Project learning highlighted several key facets of project delivery that were important to get right from the outset. This section of the report explores some of the main project development activities and the impact of those activities on delivery. One such example is the establishment of participant recruitment pathways, which will be explored further later in this chapter (see Engagement). However, it was clear from the project’s reports that raising awareness of their projects with local referrers early in the process was seen to be essential and formed a key aspect of their project development activities. Projects provided several examples of work done to engage stakeholders and advertise their interventions, albeit with mixed degrees of success.

It was clear that the time-limited nature of the Challenge Fund influenced how projects approached their project development and made projects act quickly to set up project plans immediately on receiving notification of funding. Despite this, the one-year delivery period was challenging for many.

Lead-in time

The time taken between receiving notification of the grant and starting work with participants varied greatly between projects. For example, although the mediation organisations were implementing new activities, they had the shortest lead-in time – in both cases, around four weeks from grant to referrals beginning. This appears to be for two reasons: firstly, both organisations were using existing staff for delivery and were not reliant on recruitment processes to launch; and secondly, they already had relationships with referrers such as the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (CAFCASS) and local courts. However, both organisations ensured that they engaged with referrers to advertise their new services – in Mediation Now’s case, representatives from CAFCASS and the district judges were included in the project steering group, which gave the project standing and supported referrals to the intervention.

For those engaging with new target groups, the lead-in time was more substantial, and this posed a significant difficulty in the context of a one-year project. For these projects, challenges were related to building trust in and awareness of the project – this again highlights the importance of good relationships with relevant stakeholders. This is more difficult to do when target groups are new to an organisation and as such, no existing relationships are held with potential referrers.

Lead-in time was also longer where delivery was to be structured over multiple pilot sites. Projects in these circumstances found that they needed to facilitate different requirements around data, access, ethics and so on, depending on the delivery partners in each area. In the case of the Anna Freud Centre, this meant that the project lead-in time was around six months, which clearly poses challenges for a project operating in a one-year timeframe.

Staff recruitment

Projects found that it was essential to start recruitment for their projects as quickly as possible. Projects were clearly at an advantage where recruitment could take place from elsewhere in the organisation; at Hall Smith Whittingham, staffing was agreed and arranged before even submitting the bid. However, some organisations faced difficulties recruiting to key roles such as project managers or specific practitioners (for example, a male worker to support fathers) – where posts were difficult to recruit to (for example, male workers) there was a knock-on effect for delivery in the Challenge Fund timescales.

Planning and ongoing review

As noted, projects flagged that developing project plans quickly was vital. All described how they monitored progress against those plans on an on-going basis. For most, this meant regular staff meetings – at least monthly, if not more frequently. Projects commonly used these meetings as an opportunity to review parental feedback to shape delivery; for example, at Mediation Now staff explored whether materials needed to be revised to accommodate lower participant literacy levels.

Where projects were delivered over multiple sites or areas, coordination and liaison between teams proved particularly valuable. Projects in this position held events and workshops for staff at different sites to come together on multiple occasions, as well as review meetings and liaison between sites and coordinating teams on a regular basis. This approach fostered good working relationships and positive collaboration, and as such was a facilitator for achieving project objectives in a tight timescale. At SLAM, pilot sites were coordinated by a centralised team which was supported by a coordination group. This helped to ensure consistency and quality of delivery across partner organisations in different locations, as well as fidelity to the manualised delivery model. The organisation also delivered their project in two phases, with a planned review between them. Using feedback and emergent evaluation findings at this point, they were able to amend delivery in phase two to fit parent needs.

While it was clear that planning and reviews with staff were important, Hall Smith Whittingham also noted that the development of an action plan for and with parents engaged in the project helped to keep delivery focused.

Governance structures

Projects were universally led by senior members of staff within organisations – in the case of the smaller projects, this was likely to be the CEO. Some, but not all, also had project boards, steering groups and / or expert advisory groups which helped to shape delivery. Generally, these groups were found to be well-attended and supportive, although Mediation Now noted that they would like to widen their group to include social workers and a broader base of referring agencies than those already attending. Similarly, as an organisation working with a new target group, Relate highlighted that the early establishment of a project steering group would have been beneficial to support engagement.

Fidelity to project Theories of Change

Projects were supported by the Ecorys learning team to develop their theories of change (ToC) at the launch of the Challenge Fund and were asked to review progress against their ToCs at quarterly intervals. As such, projects remained relatively faithful to their planned approaches and any changes were flagged to the Challenge Fund programme management throughout.

In their ToCs, projects were asked to consider enabling factors or necessary conditions for success. This supported identification of potential hurdles in project development. Where these did come to fruition, projects were equipped and able to explore alternative approaches.

2.2.3 Changes and adaptations

Referral rates

Projects working with seldom-heard groups found that they had to broaden their referral criteria to encourage more referrals and greater take up. For example, Relate initially had referral criteria of parents of children aged 5-16 where one parent has been released from prison in the last three months. However, this was adapted early into the project to broaden reach. They decided to remove the age criteria for children as well as the need for the parent to be post-release, so that they could also work with parents in prison due to be released.

Similarly, Tavistock Relationships – working with parents from BAME communities who presented with a learning difficulty or mental health issues – found that they were receiving very low referral rates for parents with mild to moderate learning difficulties. They decided to introduce two additional half-day training events for practitioners in Community Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS), in order to extend the reach of the project and to support the understanding and skills of these staff in working with parents in conflict. It was hoped that they would receive more referrals for parents of children with mental health issues, who themselves might have mild to moderate learning difficulties. The project lead acknowledged that referral pathways are built over time, and a longer intervention period may help to increase the diversity and volume of referrals.

Responding to feedback

The projects working closely with practitioners made concerted efforts to adapt the interventions based on practitioners’ feedback. For example, OnePlusOne, supporting disadvantaged parents in the perinatal period, had initially planned to work with and train with Health Visitors, but later adapted their target group to focus on Family Support Workers. This decision was shaped by feedback from Health Visitors that they were already under significant time pressure and would be unable to commit time to the project and cascade the training to colleagues further down the line.

Hall Smith Whittingham found that managers of services providing support to disadvantaged parents responded to the offer of continuing professional development training by asking for more information about the project. The initial meeting with service managers demonstrated that most managers wanted more information about the project and the issues to be covered in the proposed training that could be passed on to the rest of their team, rather than group training sessions straight away. The project adapted to this feedback and offered information sessions before going on to offer group training sessions to practitioners.

2.2.4 Working with practitioners

While some projects had a more emphatic focus on practitioners than others and included practitioner training as an integral component of the intervention, all of the projects worked with practitioners to some degree.

Enablers to engagement

Projects employed a wide variety of techniques to facilitate initial buy-in from practitioners. Many projects relied heavily on their existing relationships with statutory and voluntary agencies to engage with practitioners and encourage interest in the project. For example, Mediation Now had a strong relationship with the local county court and CAFCASS (the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service) having previously worked with both, particularly to establish and manage the court’s mediation scheme. Both the court and CAFCASS were able to raise awareness of the project among referring practitioners.

Similarly, Tavistock Relationships highlighted their strong relationship with the local authority Children’s Services department as a key enabler in engaging with practitioners, as two key stakeholders went above and beyond to promote the project in the local area. However, where strong local relationships were absent, projects made efforts to link in with appropriate services. For example, at OnePlusOne when staff worked to engage with Family Support Workers, support from the Regional Integration Leads through the Department for Work and Pensions helped them engage with practitioners across six local authority areas.

In addition to drawing on existing relationships with statutory and voluntary agencies, projects utilised a variety of other techniques to engage practitioners such as launch events, newsletters, and networking at conferences. For example, the Anna Freud Centre held a number of kick-off meetings with project leads in each pilot site to identify practitioners in their services who would be appropriate to receive training and deliver the intervention. Oasis Project held a launch event for local voluntary and statutory organisations. During the event they shared information about the project as well as the draft referral criteria and invited practitioners’ feedback and questions. They then followed up with each attendee following the event to secure commitment to the project in terms of future referrals to the interventions.

Some projects made concerted efforts to involve practitioners in the projects through building continuous feedback loops into the structure of the intervention. For example, Oasis Project set up a Project Advisory Group, which included representatives from a variety of agencies such as Children’s Social Care, domestic abuse support services, substance misuse services, as well as a representative from a voluntary service for men and boys. The group agreed its Terms of Reference, discussed the remit of the project, gave final feedback on the referral processes and paperwork, and provided feedback on the component of the project that aimed to work specifically with fathers.

Interestingly, SLAM found that engagement with practitioners was most successful where there was a clear linkage between the strategic objectives of individual agencies and the aims of the project, as well as where practitioners understood the project purpose and had the skills and competence to engage and discuss in a proactive and acceptable way with potentially eligible co-parents.

Barriers to engagement

While project leads reported that practitioners were generally keen to engage with the interventions, there were some barriers to working with practitioners.

A barrier highlighted by projects working with parents with complex needs was the time required of practitioners to input into the project. While most of the practitioners working with released prisoners were supportive of the project, they lacked the time, knowledge, and skills to be able to make referrals. Similarly, the Anna Freud Centre – a project working with parents experiencing high levels of conflict – reported that although practitioners were enthusiastic about the project, in the future it would be important to outline the time commitment required and ensure that facilitators have that time protected in their workload. It was estimated that practitioners spent approximately one hour per week working with families, in addition to approximately four hours spent delivering the intervention, participating in supervision, and preparing for the group.

Practitioners’ understanding of RPC

Practitioners’ understanding of parental conflict varied across the different projects and by profession. Differentiating between domestic abuse and parental conflict was frequently highlighted as an issue across a number of projects. Projects working with parents experiencing high levels of conflict found that practitioners in external services made very little distinction between parental conflict and domestic abuse, and initially interpreted parental conflict as another term for domestic abuse. This lack of clarity resulted in a large volume of inappropriate referrals for parents in abusive relationships across several projects during the early stages of delivery. This said, the mediation projects found that courts, CAFCASS, local family law firms and social workers were all keen to encourage more cooperative parenting. This could be attributed to the nature of mediation itself, which is not recommended for parents in an abusive relationship.

Differentiating between domestic abuse and parental conflict was an issue across all the projects involved to varying degrees. Those projects that included practitioner training as a component found that practitioners’ ability to distinguish between domestic abuse and parental conflict improved dramatically following training, and practitioners themselves reported feeling much more empowered to signpost parents to the correct services and intervene appropriately.

2.2.5 Working with the RPC programme

Projects were asked to reflect on the extent to which they had engaged with other Challenge Fund projects, as well as the wider RPC programme.

Practice Network events

Three formal events were held for the Challenge Fund projects: a launch event, and two Practice Network events. A fourth planned event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Projects universally found the events to be a useful opportunity to garner an understanding of what other projects were doing and the challenges they were facing. Opportunities to share learning and good practice were seen as invaluable, despite the wide variety of projects with differing approaches. Feedback was positive on the practical workshops at the events, which led to one organisation revising their tools.

Projects also appreciated the opportunity the events gave them to link with DWP and the grant management team.

Working with other Challenge Fund projects

Outside the networking events, some projects reported that they had made informal links with other organisations participating in the Challenge Fund. This was particularly the case where organisations were working in a similar geographic footprint, or where delivery approaches overlapped.

Links with the wider RPC programme

One key offer of the RPC programme is regional support for projects to embed approaches to address parental conflict, delivered through a team of Regional Integration Leads (RILs) with experience of local public service delivery. Feedback from SDF projects on the RILs was very positive, with projects noting that the practical support offered by the RILs had resulted in new local networks being built. For Hall Smith Whittingham, this had resulted in good links being made with the local authority (LA) leading to use of LA premises for training for professionals. OnePlusOne found help from their RIL to have been imperative in making links with local professionals to attend the training offered and promote the project.

There were otherwise limited examples of projects engaging with the wider RPC programme. Where these occurred, it was due to existing links within grantee organisations; for example, Oasis Project was also part of an RPC Innovation Fund project, and thus had been able to access information about the local context for RPC and also engage with some of the programme activities such as a webinar. For SLAM, links between one pilot site and the RPC programme meant that they had been able to embed the wider agenda more firmly in their strategic planning.

Some projects felt that it would be have been beneficial for the Challenge Fund to have been more strongly linked to the wider RPC programme. This would have supported understanding the wider context of project delivery but could also have strengthened the connection between the various strands of the programme, potentially increasing referrals to the Challenge Fund providers.

2.2.6 Sustainability

Sustainability was a key consideration for all the projects involved, and they endeavoured to put mechanisms in place to ensure that the outcomes of the project would be sustained beyond the lifespan of the Challenge Fund.

Funding

Both mediation projects highlighted the importance of legal aid in delivering their activities, as most disadvantaged parents are unwilling or unable to pay for mediation services. For mediation to have a long-term impact, services need to work with parents over a sustained period and engage with the children in a series of child consultations, rather than just one. However, this kind of sustained activity would not be covered by legal aid. As such, Mediation Now is planning to work in partnership with a local charity to apply for funding from the National Lottery Community Fund to deliver a new form of the intervention over 12 months.

Where interventions have built on existing models, there is improved scope to roll out delivery. For example, at SLAM, the organisation can share their programme across their existing delivery network of more than 30 sites in England. However, this is reliant on funding availability.

Practitioner training

Practitioner training has been highlighted as a key factor for sustainability, as practitioners have retained the knowledge acquired and will be able to utilise their deeper understanding of working with parents in conflict beyond the lifespan of the intervention, and indeed in other roles. For example, Tavistock Relationships found that the initial practitioner training event enabled the dissemination of knowledge about the impact and identification of parental conflict on children and the ways in which practitioners needed to be engaging this population in order to help them resolve their difficulties. The subsequent four-day training course supported this learning, as a number of attendees went on to work directly with parents under supervision. Practitioners interviewed reported that the training allowed for a shift in their own practice, and after the project ended, they continued to offer their services to parents in conflict within the local area.

Similarly, Family Support Workers who received training as part of OnePlusOne’s project reported that while that they had received training on reducing parental conflict in the past, they had been left with no resources to direct parents to. The digital behaviour change programmes (Me, You and Baby Too on Click relationships and You and Your Partner on Baby Buddy) and digital practitioner guide were found to be very useful and will be continued to be used when the funding comes to an end. Relate found that the practitioner training has increased the relevance and status of families in the lives of prisoners and enabled practitioners to talk to prisoners about the importance of family engagement, as well as enabling prisoners to discuss family issues with practitioners. Equipping practitioners with a non-judgemental, nuanced language with which to discuss parental conflict has thus allowed for a more open and honest conversation about the impact of parental conflict on children and how to reduce conflict within intimate relationships.

Ongoing partnerships

The projects aimed to engage with wide variety of statutory and voluntary agencies in delivering their interventions. While many projects consolidated and strengthened their existing relationships with partner agencies, some projects were able to establish partnerships which they continue to draw on beyond the lifespan of the Challenge Fund. For example, there is currently an opportunity with the reformation of the National Probation Service to develop a partnership approach to working with families, working with other family services, and to train Ministry of Justice staff to deliver prison-based support. Relate is planning to work with the Ministry of Justice to offer this service on a prison by prison basis. Similarly, Oasis Project already has existing links with commissioners in the area where they currently operate drug and alcohol services for women. They plan to expand upon this remit and are currently exploring options to grow their services to include support for family and carers of those experiencing drug and alcohol misuse.

Projects working with parents with complex needs highlighted that there needs to be some recognition that a holistic, multi-agency response is required, and that interventions designed to address parental conflict alone cannot provide a long-term, sustainable solution to the full range of parents’ needs. By providing long-term, flexible services, families will understand that support is available and receive support to utilise the skills and strengths developed during the interventions to reduce the conflict in their intimate relationships.

2.3 Supporting parents

2.3.1 Engagement

Referral pathways

Both mediation projects targeted separated families with complex needs and some element of disadvantage. While Mediation Now had relatively few problems in engaging the target group, Hall Smith Whittingham encountered several challenges in engaging participants. This was partly attributed to the timescale of the project, as the launch of the project coincided with a natural lull in the cycle of mediation recruitment, as most people instruct a mediator in January / February or Autumn. However, it appears that Mediation Now had greater success with recruitment due to strong existing relationships with partner agencies.

Participants were recruited to the Hall Smith Whittingham’s project through a variety of referral pathways including the provider, an ex-partner, a solicitor, Citizens Advice, or an employer. However, most parents interviewed were recruited to the project after approaching the organisation for mediation.

Challenges and lessons learned

The projects targeting parents with complex needs, such as substance misuse, learning difficulties, or where a parent has been recently released from prison, found that there were some issues engaging the target group. These included shame and guilt, which impeded help-seeking behaviour, as well as discomfort with the term “parental conflict”. In addition, where projects had to revise their delivery models this caused delays to timelines, leaving less time for practitioners to engage with parents.

Strong working relationships with partner agencies was frequently highlighted as a key factor in successful recruitment. For example, Relate initially relied on probation and family services to make referrals. However, after receiving multiple inappropriate referrals, the project realised that they needed to expand their referral criteria to work with other services such as family support providers who may be in a better position to recognise families in need. Similarly, Tavistock Relationships attributed their high referral rates to their strong relationship with the local authority’s children’s social care department. However, the project still struggled to recruit parents with learning difficulties despite these relationships; referrals were primarily for parents with mental health issues.

At SLAM, the project originally aimed to recruit parents experiencing lower levels of conflict but at high risk of disadvantage. However, there was evidence that the risk profile of those engaged was skewed towards those with more complex needs. Although their evaluation found that complexities of family life can be a barrier to engagement, a relational, face to face approach to engagement with eligible parents supported recruitment and helped parents to overcome personal and logistical barriers.

Projects targeting parents experiencing higher levels of conflict found that they received a number of inappropriate referrals for parents in abusive relationships and had to signpost them to other services. Most projects included a rigorous initial assessment which aimed to identify if there had been a history of abuse in the relationship or ongoing coercive control.

2.3.2 Attitudes to parental conflict

Evidence across all the interventions involved demonstrated that attitudes and perceptions of parental conflict varied across parents, practitioners, managers and organisations, and were shaped by a range of complex factors, including gender, prior training, history working with statutory services, class and ethnicity.

Parents across both mediation projects wanted to reduce the conflict in their relationship. However, many parents did not want to actively “co-parent”, and rather wanted to put child contact arrangements in place that minimised interactions with their ex-partner. Both mediation projects found that parents rarely perceived their own behaviour to be a problem, and rather felt that the issues lay solely with their ex-partner. The counselling sessions offered by Hall Smith Whittingham were found to be particularly useful if both parents attended, as they enabled each parent to understand the other’s point of view.

Furthermore, Hall Smith Whittingham found that there was a clear gendered difference in attitudes towards parental conflict. While almost all fathers interviewed either strongly agreed or agreed that communication had been improved (50%), only 35% of mothers strongly agreed or agreed with this statement and 36% strongly disagreed. In addition, the majority of fathers also strongly agreed or agreed that the project had reduced the amount of conflict with their former partner/spouse (50%) whilst only 33% of mothers strongly agreed or agreed with this. A larger proportion of mothers strongly disagreed that the project had reduced the amount of conflict with their former partner compared to fathers.

Conversely, at SLAM where the intervention is delivered in a group setting, there was evidence of fathers benefitting from having other fathers present in the intervention, allowing them to identify with others’ experiences and to feel more confident about sharing their own. The project noted that the role of the male practitioner had been vital to supporting fathers’ engagement, and this had been particularly important as fathers appear to be particularly affected by the practicalities and logistics of seeking help as a couple.

Distinguishing between conflict and abuse

There was some recognition from mediation projects that in cases of coercive control and domestic abuse, a more holistic multi-agency response is required – mediation alone could not offer a long-term solution. Where referrals involving parents in abusive relationships were made to the project, they were referred on to other appropriate services. Mediation projects made a concerted effort to delineate between conflict and abuse, and there was a clear understanding that it would be dangerous to attempt to mediate between parents within an abusive relationship.

The projects working with practitioners found that generally practitioners had a good understanding of parental conflict and its impact on children. However, as noted elsewhere in this report, there was a strong emphasis on helping practitioners to differentiate between parental conflict and domestic abuse. For Relate, there was recognition that for many prisoners, there is a history of domestic violence or abuse within their current or previous relationships and practitioners were careful to assess whether intervention would be appropriate or not.

Talking about parental conflict

The language used to discuss parental conflict was frequently highlighted as an area of sensitivity. Projects working with families with complex needs were particularly careful with the language used to talk about parental conflict. Multiple projects working with disadvantaged parents found that parents often did not recognise the dynamic of the relationship as being dominated by conflict, and practitioners instead referred to “working together as a team” and “avoiding arguments”. Oasis Project developed a session which introduced the terms: ‘attack, avoid, confide’, to equip parents with a lexicon to discuss the conflict in the relationship without feeling judged.

Oasis Project also found that parents’ attitudes towards parental conflict were partly determined by the group dynamic, and their perceptions of conflict were shaped by ideas about social class. For example, practitioners showed participants a video of parents arguing to encourage a dialogue about parental conflict. The parents in the group felt that the scenario shown barely constituted conflict compared to the levels they experienced in their own relationships, and also felt that the couple in the video were “middle-class”, and thus had a different idea of conflict and how this is manifested in an intimate relationship. Interestingly, Oasis Project does use the term domestic abuse in their intervention and asks parents to think about domestic abuse in an objective manner in relation to how it may impact on children.

Importantly, while parents across all the projects recognised the impact of conflict on their relationship with their partner or ex-partner, there was a more limited understanding of the impact of parental conflict on children, particularly amongst parents experiencing high levels of conflict. Parents were shocked when practitioners explained the psychological and even physical health impact on children who regularly witness parental conflict. This point clearly supports the research conducted by DWP^{[footnote 5]} to underpin the RPC Programme, which found that parents largely did not recognise the long-term impact of conflict on their children. Parents involved in DWP’s research also believed that parental conflict had little or no impact on babies and children aged up to seven, as they do not understand adult issues and behaviours.

2.3.3 Outcomes and impact

A range of positive outcomes were achieved across all the projects, and there is evidence that the projects have had a tangible impact on parents, children, and professionals. However, some interventions were terminated prematurely due to COVID-19 lockdown restrictions. It is thus difficult to assess the long-term impact of the projects at this stage. For example, a mother involved in Hall Smith Whittingham’s project felt that she had not received enough counselling sessions to really be able to engage in mediation; had she been able to attend the full course of sessions, the impact of the intervention would have been much greater.

Both mediation projects led to a number of positive outcomes among parents as well as other professionals such as employers and teachers. Teachers who attended training sessions as part of Hall Smith Whittingham’s intervention reported that they felt they had an increased awareness of the needs of separating parents following the training. Parents interviewed disclosed that they felt more ready to undergo mediation following the counselling sessions, as well as improved communication with their ex-partner as a result of the counselling. While parents across both interventions initially had some awareness that conflict in the household could have a negative impact on children, the mediation projects resulted in an increased awareness of the detrimental impact of parental conflict on children. Both mediation projects found that parents were more likely to reach settlement and avoid court proceedings because of the counselling and / or mediation sessions, providing early indications that there is scope for cost savings arising from such interventions. Indeed, Mediation Now found that their project had saved around three weeks of District Judge time over the 12 months of their Challenge Fund delivery. This was because a third of the parents engaged who were involved in court proceedings reached an agreement during mediation which formed the basis of the court’s consent order, avoiding an estimated 15 days of District Judge input^{[footnote 6]}.

The projects working with practitioners found that the training sessions largely met practitioners’ objectives and had a significant impact on their knowledge and competencies. Practitioners felt empowered to signpost parents to appropriate services and reported improvements in their knowledge and confidence around supporting the couple relationship across the transition to parenthood following the training. For those practitioners working with particularly vulnerable and seldom-heard parents, there was consensus that training sessions enabled them to develop skills to engage more meaningfully with parents experiencing conflict. This said, Tavistock Relationships found that it was particularly difficult to identify and reach parents with mild to moderate learning difficulties, and as a result there is limited data on the outcomes and impact of the project on this group.

For interventions targeting parents experiencing higher levels of conflict and complex multiple needs, it seemed that the strength and stability of parental relationships did not necessarily improve, but parents reported lower levels of conflict and greater awareness of the negative impact of parental conflict on children. Four families engaged in Oasis Project’s intervention reported a reduction in intervention from social services, including examples of being “stepped down” from Child Protection status, which the families attributed to their participation in the project. In addition, Oasis Project reported that the group of parents bonded by sharing their experiences of having to work with social care and maintained contact after the completion of the project through a WhatsApp group.

Reflecting findings from projects working with families in high conflict, SLAM – targeting parents experiencing lower levels of conflict – found that there was a reduction in child exposure to and involvement in parent conflict as well better co-parenting and reported improvements in communication by parents. Parents interviewed for SLAM’s evaluation attributed these changes to the BAP-T intervention, reporting that the course had changed their perceptions of parenting.

There were a range of barriers to achieving the desired outcomes of reduced parental conflict, improved communication, avoidance of court proceedings and improved children’s well-being. These included parents’ fears of negative judgment; complexities of family life; and social anxiety, as well as logistical arrangements such as the availability of childcare, flexibility of work requirements and time to attend sessions, which prevented parents from engaging in the interventions. On the other hand, projects identified a number of enablers which contributed to the positive impact of the interventions. These included parents’ overwhelming desire to resolve conflict and improve their co-parenting, as well as improve their children’s behaviour and reduce their own sense of isolation.

2.3.4 Participant feedback

Practitioner feedback

Practitioner feedback on the training sessions delivered by projects was overwhelmingly positive. Practitioners generally felt that the content was appropriate, the structure was engaging, and the topic was relevant to their practice. Some practitioners were familiar with the issues covered because of previous training experiences, but still felt that the training provided a useful refresher and that it was accessible regardless of previous experience. At OnePlusOne, where the intervention straddled both strands of the Challenge Fund, practitioners engaged particularly valued having access to a new digital resource (developed through the Challenge Fund project) that they could use with parents to support their own work.. Indeed, practitioners found that the resource fit seamlessly into their existing support pathways:

I think just generally I would say it couldn’t really have fitted better with what we’re delivering. Do you know what I mean? … it slotted into our world absolutely perfectly.

[Practitioner and training participant]

Parent feedback

Parents across all the projects gave positive feedback. For families with complex needs, the non-judgemental approach was particularly appreciated. At Relate, participants who were supported disclosed feeling very grateful to have someone who would listen to them who was not part of any statutory service.

Parents experiencing both higher and lower levels of conflict reported that they found the experience very valuable in terms of improving communication with their partners and enabling them to view the situation from the other parent’s perspective. One mother who was interviewed disclosed that:

Talking about my relationship with my husband, I realised most of the problems are from misunderstandings with your partner which can cause problems with raising kids.

[Parent]

A father involved in another project disclosed that:

[we] have learnt how to communicate with each other and take each other’s feelings into account and things like that…

[Parent]

Similarly, Oasis Project reported that co-parents found that the project had provided greater clarity in understand their relationship within the context of caring for their children. However, during the final review session, three of the four couples state they could have benefitted more from the project if there was a greater emphasis on their couple/co-parent relationship, as opposed to addressing their parenting roles.

The care taken by practitioners to develop an accessible, non-judgemental language with which to discuss parental conflict was also picked up on by parents and greatly appreciated. Parents who had recently separated found the idea of ‘destructive patterns’ to be very helpful, and many were actively working to change their patterns of communication with their ex-partner. One mother disclosed that:

It’s about having people to lean on and take advice from because they are in a similar situation to your own. I really bonded with the other mums and we have each other’s numbers so we can carry on supporting each other, it’s nice to talk to people who know exactly what you’re feeling.

[Parent]

Both mediation projects received very positive feedback from participants. At Hall Smith Whittingham, where counselling was offered alongside mediation, all parents interviewed found that the intervention had generally been helpful. However, a number of parents felt that counselling alone was insufficient to resolve years of poor communication, and also disclosed that the effectiveness of the counselling sessions was limited if only one parent attended. This said, several mothers reported that the counselling sessions had a positive impact on their parenting skills. One mother reported that she was grateful that it had put her “in the right frame of mind to, you know, be there for my children”.

Parents appreciated the practical, focussed nature of the mediation sessions and found that it helped them to reach an agreement with their ex-partner. One participant interviewed disclosed that without the mediation, she and her ex-partner would have “got stuck… perhaps dug our heels in… but because [Mediator] was there she kept it calm and she said, “oh well I think what [mother] is trying to say there is this” or “what [ex-partner] is saying there is this” and that was helpful; it made us be reasonable, to be honest.”

Feedback from children

Some projects worked with children as well as parents, through child-inclusive mediation sessions and group counselling. At the Anna Freud Centre, feedback from children was mixed; younger children participating in group mediation sessions generally enjoyed the games and snacks, made friends, and valued seeing their parents working together without arguing for their benefit. However, it was found that older children were less able to benefit from the playfulness of the group sessions, and some disclosed that they were worried about the impact of the group on their parents, as they recognised that attending the group could be difficult or upsetting for their mums and dads. Some of the children found talking about parental conflict difficult and found practitioners’ questions ‘too personal’. However, in this case, outcome measures suggest that through their involvement in the project, children were better equipped to process and cope with their experiences of parental conflict. Although the numbers interviewed were relatively small, project evaluations evidenced positive feedback from the young people involved in mediation and associated counselling. At Mediation Now for example, children reported that their involvement in the process had helped relieve them of worries and that they had benefited from being able to talk to someone.

3.0 Learning from the Digital Support projects

This chapter synthesises and analyses feedback from the two fully digital projects, as well as a third project which straddled both SDF and Digital Support strands. The chapter first explores learning around the practicalities of project delivery, and then looks in more detail at the support provided to participants and their experiences of the support.

3.1 Overview of the Digital Support projects

The Digital Support strand of the Challenge Fund aimed to learn more about what engages parents online to help reduce parental conflict. Digital projects were asked to target parents with low digital skills and who live in low income and workless households.

Specifically, the Digital Support strand sought to fund projects that:

• placed material where disadvantaged families go online
• developed support material based on users’ needs
• developed material that was engaging and maintained engagement

Projects were also asked to utilise research conducted by DWP which included a Landscape Gap Analysis and user interviews exploring how parents from low-income / workless households use the internet, and where they go online, particularly to address parental conflict^{[footnote 7]}.

Digital Support funded projects

Action for Children

The aim of this project was to learn more about what parents’ needs are, to discover how to reach parents online and to provide support to help reduce parental conflict.

Action for Children conducted in-depth user research, building on the research conducted by DWP. The project incorporated parental conflict and child maintenance topics into an online support service and launched a ‘check-in’ text messaging service, alongside user testing with parents throughout.

Good Things Foundation

This project aimed to test what works in reaching disadvantaged families online.

Good Things Foundation made use of its network of online centres to conduct user research and user testing with parents. Good Things Foundation collated extensive evidence on how best to engage low-income/workless parents from a wide range of backgrounds.

A series of videos and other media were created to form the ‘See it Differently’ campaign. The campaign tested Behaviour Modelling Training by including story-based content. User testing and feedback sessions with groups of parents happened alongside.

Good Things Foundation worked in partnership with OnePlusOne.

OnePlusOne

OnePlusOne aimed to support parents making the transition to parenthood by testing an adapted version of a parenting intervention new to the UK (Couple Care and Coping Programme) online through the Baby Buddy app and the Click Relationships platform.

The initiative tested whether the combination of digital and practitioner support was effective in supporting new parents to cope and communicate better, and whether delivering this intervention digitally improves outcomes for parents in the transition to parenthood.

Table 3: Digital Support projects, architecture, and target group

Organisation	Architecture/Delivery	Target Groups
Good Things Foundation	Video Project site: www.seeitdifferently.org	Workless parents / parents on a low income with low digital skills, facing barriers such as English not being their first language, low confidence.
Action for Children	Text-messaging service Project site: https://spaceforustoo.org.uk/	Low income parents with low digital and literacy skills. Separated or together with a focus on early parents or parents of young children. Any conflict level and range of conflict awareness.
OnePlusOne	A digital programme accessed (1) via a browser (Click Relationships) by practitioners working with parents, and (2) via a pregnancy app (Baby Buddy) accessed universally by users who have downloaded the app onto their mobile phones.	Parents in the perinatal period who were disadvantaged and may have circumstantial risks (separation in family of origin, unplanned pregnancy, low income or workless, low education) and skills-oriented risks (lack of relational capability, low literacy levels, poor communication, and poor conflict resolution skills).

3.2 Project delivery

Projects recognised the importance of gathering learning from their interventions. One specific difference in the approach of digital projects compared with SDF projects was their greater integration of learning within the design of the project itself, which is good practice for any product development work and leads to an ‘iterative’ product design. This section of the report explores digital project approaches to learning – evaluative and otherwise – as well as some of the challenges and lessons learned throughout the process.

3.2.1 Approach to learning

Overall, the three digital projects carried out learning of three types: early exploratory, product development, and evaluative. Generally, these approaches differed from SDF project learning approaches, which more commonly took a pre/post evaluative approach to building learning. In addition, none of the three digital projects commissioned an external evaluation of the project as all three had access to in-house research teams who have produced comprehensive project evaluation reports.

The two fully digital projects had a very clear and structured approach to their learning work, which continued throughout the project’s delivery. Overall research aims and participant groups were set out in advance, but approaches were flexible in order to respond to project demands. Three examples of this flexible approach stand out:

• Action for Children carried out ‘affinity mapping’ workshops with project team members during project delivery, to help analyse the research findings and to revise the learning goals as they went along.
• Action for Children were also responsive to the requests of DWP to incorporate learning around child maintenance into the project and developed new content and targeted Google Ads with this in mind. The project report states that this was done “in the hope of gathering additional insights about how parents manage financially when separating, and their needs relating to child maintenance”.
• Further work to improve the general understanding of digital behaviours was found to be necessary by Good Things Foundation part of the way through their work, and they responded by carrying out some work which observed a group of parents using their smartphones, or a provided device, to see if and how respondents obtained information and support online.

Early discovery research enabled the projects to pick out early learning around family demographics and themes raised during conversations that could assist in understanding the target audience, starting product development, and forming project learning goals.

Development research that continued alongside product development provided some particularly valuable learning. Projects described this iterative product development research as a ‘learning by doing’, or ‘agile’ approach. One particularly valuable source from Action for Children was data gathered from their online support chat service, which provided ongoing access to information on user need, enabling project team members to continually adapt both website content and targeted marketing in order to respond to current needs of parents experiencing conflict. A/B testing^{[footnote 8]} and content testing for understanding and issue recognition were carried out at regular intervals during content development, by both fully digital projects and to a less significant extent by the semi-digital project.

One of the digital projects (Good Things Foundation) clearly separated out their development research from their in-house evaluative research, which occurred at different phases of project delivery, while the other two made less distinction between data that was used for development and data that would be used evaluatively. However, all agreed that evaluative data needed to be multi-method – drawing on a range of different sources including analytics, survey data, qualitative interviews, group observations, and social media comments.

All digital projects noted the importance of research engagement with a range of people including those with lived experience as well as practitioners and the need to gather information from a range of sources in different ways, including face-to-face interviews and focus groups, alongside online surveys. In addition, all three of the digital projects sense checked and processed their learning throughout project delivery by inviting feedback from stakeholders. This occurred at the RPC learning events, but also through advisory boards, sector meetings, and in one example via an advisory board of young people.

Successes and challenges

The iterative use of research to embed learning within their projects in ‘real time’ was highlighted as a success by both of the fully digital projects. Key positive examples include the use of project data for research, which enabled the research response rates to benefit from the marketing work being carried out to enable delivery, and also ensured that insights were focused on the ‘real’ beneficiaries or potential beneficiaries of the work. The examination of real time data also enabled learning and adjustments to be made which benefited project delivery, and which otherwise would probably have been lost over time. For example, Action for Children improved the click rate^{[footnote 9]} for Google Ads marketing the intervention from 2.3% at the end of quarter two, to 4% at the end of quarter three. The team attributed this to their ongoing research work to establish profiles of target parent groups and to clarify the themes and content of most interest and use to these groups. This provided ongoing improvements to targeting and engaging with parents online.

This embedded approach was also beneficial in terms of the quality of the insights, according to Good Things Foundation. For this project, co-design activities with parents resulted in very open and frank conversations with target audience groups by asking them to talk about people in general rather than asking about their own personal situations. The team felt that this approach was very successful in encouraging people to be open and to share suggestions freely, which may not have happened had they focused only on research around individual experiences.

All projects acknowledged the importance of partnership working in finding participants for testing, and this has worked to varied degrees of success. Good Things Foundation were able to utilise their network of online centres as a hub for their learning, and these became places where they have been able to work with partners to engage the target audience and to gather feedback from those close to the frontline. The familiar physical locations that this enabled for testing led to some continuity and momentum in the participant engagement they obtained. Action for Children did not recruit via physical locations and when they experienced challenges in recruiting low income parents and fathers, these were managed in a number of ways such as through postcode-targeted recruitment and online survey filtering, and in the end they also adopted a partnership approach, engaging frontline recruiters and working with a specialist recruitment agency in order to help to meet their targets.

A common challenge which all three digital projects found hard to overcome was their aim to engage with and collect data from particular subgroups of the project’s target population. Good Things Foundation had intended to engage LGBTQ+ parents but were not able to include any parents identifying as LGBTQ+ during the project (although the project team hoped – based on anecdotal feedback – that the videos tested with other groups were relatable for these families as well).

The nature of these Challenge Fund digital projects and their need to engage subgroups which are not commonly targeted may have contributed to the scale of the challenge experienced here. The two subgroups hardest to recruit were conflict-unaware parents and those with low digital skills. The former were sought via universal services and support groups, with filtering questions used to direct eligibility. The latter group were targeted using the more commonly studied characteristic of low literacy as a proxy for low digital skills, and the association between these was validated during the research through activities and questions about digital usage. Projects were restricted by the targeting options available on online channels and therefore it remained hard to adequately engage these groups and this seems important learning for future similar projects. The learning around these two sub-groups reflects the learning from DWP’s research Reducing Parental Conflict: a digital discovery^{[footnote 10]}, which emphasised the importance of engaging parents with these characteristics. The DWP research found that for conflict unaware parents, their behaviours can exacerbate the conflict, emphasising the importance of engaging them. For those with low digital skills, DWP found that content must be placed where these parents already go online. The relationship between the DWP research and Challenge Fund learning is explored further in Section 3.4 of this report.

Subgroup challenges extended also to projects’ ability to collect reliable digital data that could help them determine the take up and response to digital materials by key subgroups. Many of the limitations of digital analytics were known ahead of the project work and teams tried to design measurement approaches with these factors in mind. However, one project has reported that they were not able to overcome the challenge of being unable to differentiate between cohorts of users who accessed the project resource on Facebook and YouTube – even struggling to capture the referral platform that these users had come from.

Impact of COVID-19 on learning

The impact of the pandemic on learning has been less significant for the Digital Support projects than for the SDF projects. OnePlusOne was the exception however, finding that practitioners who had been trained in using the blended resource with parents were less able to continue in their delivery as more pressing issues emerged. However, practitioners commented on the usefulness of the resource when face-to-face contact is limited, as they could encourage parents to use the resource independently. One of the digital projects experienced challenges when their family centres were closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant that for one of their three target group segments, the planned observation sessions could not take place and no data was collected.

Another project experienced limitations in their ability to follow up on whether engaged parents had sought further support following their participation in the project, which they had hoped would lead to insights on the sustained impact of their work. In the end, there was only a two to four-week gap between delivered support sessions and follow-up research interviews, which meant in depth conversations about further support were not possible.

One project’s planned learning event could not take place because of the COVID-19 lockdown.

3.2.2 Project development

This section looks at the structure of the projects over the course of the funding period, to see how they developed over the course of the work. Projects were asked to reflect on their theory of change to consider how they had developed.

As with the SDF projects, the short time between confirmation of grant and starting work was noted to have been challenging for the digital projects. Strong existing teams made this easier for one of the projects and no delays were incurred, while the need to quickly recruit new staff members during this time proved challenging for another. Establishing early and clear project management approaches such as collaboration software, planning and collaboration meetings was found to have been helpful. It was positive that time was made to develop working relationships between project team groups that had not collaborated before and this made delivery smoother, particularly during the ‘sprints’ and iterations required for an agile delivery approach.

Project teams found the collaborative process for developing the theory of change to be somewhat challenging, with slower timelines required for sharing and receiving feedback. However, the project team said that they found having an agreed theory of change to be a valuable tool for aligning their project strategy within the project team and guiding their thinking during delivery.

Strong project governance and networks such as via an advisory board or stakeholder consultations was noted as important for success. Establishing partnerships was more of a challenge, and projects have done well not to underestimate the need for time and patience in setting up new partnerships. For one project, recruitment of family centres as partners required new conversations around supporting parental conflict as this was a new subject area for both parties. For another, frontline service staff that they were relying upon for participant recruitment were slow to warm up and this caused some delivery delays. The third project experienced engagement challenges with a key delivery partner organisation related to workforce pressures as well as a lack of confidence around using and managing digital data. Changing partners led to delivery delays of up to three months and resulted in a smaller number of parents being engaged in the project, as well as a low level of follow-up with these parents.

Reflecting on the theory of change

Action for Children, reflecting on their theory of change, were able to highlight inputs that on reflection were the most important of those set out at the project start. Action for Children went through significant differences in the product development model compared to expectations and has summarised the development stages that the project underwent as shown in Figure 1. It is to be expected that digital projects will undergo revisions as they progress, and the setting out of a plan can help to make sure this revision is deliberate and strategically justified. It is reassuring that the planned and measured outputs for this project remained largely consistent throughout, while the team’s understanding of how to achieve these outputs progressed during delivery. Good Things Foundation set out their anticipated development process as a series of agile ‘sprints’ which were expected to remain broadly as planned but to vary in length depending on project progress. OnePlusOne, which had more traditional linear programme planning in place, experienced some delays, although these related to developing content on two different and distinct platforms.

Figure 1: Action for Children’s development stages

User research
↓
Co-design
↓
Early prototype
↓
Digital behaviour
↓
Alpha user testing
↓
Beta user-testing
↓
Evaluation

3.2.3 Changes and adaptations

The previous section has spoken generally about the projects’ structure and development, and how well this enabled them to manage changes and adaptations to the project that were necessary as the work progressed. This section looks in more detail at the changes and adaptations that were required.

For OnePlusOne – an SDF project with digital elements and a more traditional milestone-based programme design – there was a significant change over the course of delivery, in terms of a change in delivery partner. This resulted in delays to delivery but the project team ultimately considered this to have been necessary for successful delivery.

Good Things Foundation experienced key changes in their delivery relating to training for practitioners and testing of that training. The project also found they needed to undertake additional user testing of videos in a face to face format, rather than online. While the process of developing these changes was lengthy, the effect on the project’s outcomes was limited.

Action for Children experienced no significant changes in their delivery throughout the project journey. The project report says in relation to this, “Our project team has extensive experience of user-centric design principles, and these were adhered to throughout the development process”. It seems likely that good agile project planning helped to ensure that project iterations were absorbed as small amendments rather than being substantial changes in approach.

Throughout the digital projects there were also small adaptations to content design that responded to user testing and feedback as well as usage data, as one would expect in an iterative approach. For example, shifts were made in the content of arguments featured in videos, changes to the language used in online ads to drive engagement, and altering the perspective used during content production to include dads as well as mums’ perspectives and perceptions of conflict. These discoveries and responses represent good practice in testing content and ensuring that it is adjusted to best meet user needs in service of the project aims.

It is important to note that despite the changes made throughout development and delivery, there was no negative impact for either of the agile projects on the outputs or outcomes they achieved. Conversely, the project with traditional, milestone-based development and a launch date target did experience delays to their launch. This suggests that a project plan that looks ahead to outputs and targets to ensure accountability while leaving flexibility for change as the work develops was beneficial in these circumstances.

3.2.4 Architecture

The architecture of projects in the Digital Support strand reflected the need to reach and engage parents on trusted channels and platforms that were already part of their browsing habits. The projects in this strand all used different digital architecture, including:

• OnePlusOne: an existing parent-focused app (Baby Buddy) and mobile-optimised website (Click Relationships)
• Good Things Foundation: social media channels (Facebook and YouTube) with accompanying website
• Action for Children: a text messaging service (Space For Us Too)

All projects delivered interventions on platforms that could be accessed simply via a smartphone (one delivering within an existing smartphone app) without a sign-up or sign-in process to ensure ease of engagement with the materials. The exception to this was MYBT on Click Relationships, which does require parents to create an account.

Working across platforms

A theme demonstrated by the architecture of the projects was the need for more than one platform when engaging parents from the target groups. By using existing platforms, for example social media channels, projects were, to an extent, restricted by the architecture and functionality of those platforms. For example, Good Things Foundation delivered their intervention via video content on social media but hosted the full suite of videos on a dedicated website that users were directed to. Action for Children used a website combined with a text messaging service. Without building a bespoke tool or app, projects delivered different parts of their interventions across different channels depending on where they were most likely to engage parents and be successful.

Designing content for the platform

Architecture influenced the output of the projects as a key focus was ensuring content was delivered to users on existing/trusted channels and platforms such as Facebook, YouTube or existing parenting apps. The digital projects showcased an approach of designing content for the platforms they were distributed on, rather than developing a bespoke platform or online tool to best fit the content of the intervention. This meant that research and development in how best to convey the content within the restrictions of existing platforms was required.

Good Things Foundation delivered behaviour-modelling-training (BMT) via story-based video content to be distributed on social media. Initially they realised that using traditional BMT methods would mean the videos would be quite long. They were advised to ensure videos were kept short as users would be unlikely to watch longer video content on social media. They decided to keep their videos to three to four minutes long, with a focus on making the first 10 seconds as engaging as possible to attract the attention of the user. This was an effective approach to adapt and develop the content to fit the style of the platforms on which it was being delivered.

OnePlusOne delivered a digital Behaviour Modelling Training intervention, hosted on two platforms – Click Relationships and Baby Buddy app. The intervention comprising video, animations, imagery and text, aimed to test the efficacy of digital behaviour change for first time parents in transition to parenthood.

3.2.5 Working with practitioners

As with the SDF projects, there was a range of stakeholders involved in the development and delivery of the digital projects, ranging from DWP as funders through to referring agencies and service delivery partners. The latter acted as a gatekeeper to service users and were also involved in the discovery and product development / testing phases for the projects.

For some projects, engagement with stakeholders for the Challenge Fund was built on existing relationships; however, these relationships were strengthened further by a shared understanding of the value of the new services to clients. Where new relationships were needed, one grantee drew on the support of the Regional Integration Leads to support engagement.

A lack of time and capacity on the part of practitioners was a challenge for engagement, despite a belief in the aims of the projects. This was particularly an issue when working to agile processes which needed rapid input.

Practitioner understanding of parental conflict

Parental attitudes to conflict are explored later in this report, but (as with the SDF strand of work) all digital projects noted that they had to work with practitioners to improve their understanding of parental conflict, particularly in terms of differentiating between high-level conflict and abuse – some practitioners did not feel confident in differentiating between the two. One project reported that practitioners believed that people required experience or training to be able to differentiate between conflict and abuse. Interestingly, practitioners were also unfamiliar with identifying and supporting families in lower-conflict situations, as they were often working in targeted services where parents would more likely be in high-conflict relationships.

Practitioners supporting the Good Things Foundation project reported discomfort in opening conversations with parents (and mothers in particular) around conflict; this was a largely cultural issue, where staff of (in this case) white British heritage were worried about raising concerns over behaviour that may seem coercive or abusive from their perspective, but may just be an exaggerated example of what is considered a cultural norm by parents of other heritage (in this case Asian parents). At this project, practitioners reported feeling more confident in having such conversations following the training provided through the project.

3.2.6 Working with the RPC programme

As with the SDF projects, digital interventions also had access to support from the Regional Integration Leads (RILs) working across the RPC programme, and were able to attend the Challenge Fund Practice Network Events.

Like the SDF projects, digital projects found the events beneficial in terms of sharing learning, reviewing common themes, and building relationships with other projects. One project shaped their approach by learning from other organisations’ experiences of using different interventions and programmes. Another project noted how the events had given them the opportunity to share their beta videos with other Challenge Fund projects which generated interest and avenues for sharing their final materials.

For the digital projects, there was more limited engagement with the RILs than those in the SDF strand. Only one organisation had worked with them to any extent, and this was around securing practitioner support rather than the digital aspect of their intervention. There was also limited engagement with the wider RPC programme.

3.2.7 Ethics

The two fully digital projects have considered the structural ethical issues raised by digital marketing. Such conversations in this emerging discipline are not natural for all, and a prompt to consider ethical issues at the start of the programme, perhaps around the time of theory of change development, might have been helpful.

Good Things Foundation took a stance of rejecting certain commonplace marketing engagement approaches because of them potentially being unethical. For example, one option for Facebook targeted ads requires the uploading of comprehensive data on parents to build a user profile for targeting, as well as the use of a ‘pixel’ code on the project’s website to track users finding the content via Facebook ads. These approaches both provide data that can be used for improving the ads and enable individuals to be ‘remembered’ and retargeted in the future. The project’s rationale for rejecting these potentially valuable approaches was that the target audience, who were explicitly those with low digital skills, may be less able to understand and consent to the collection and usage of their data, making them more vulnerable. Instead, the project team restricted themselves to Facebook ad targeting approaches that only used data which parents themselves had already provided to Facebook.

Social media marketing was considered and rejected by Action for Children for reasons that combined value for money in terms of ad targeting with ethical concerns. Outreach marketing was done via Google Ads with proxies such as the geolocation of the user’s device being used to target potential users (again, no targeting data was uploaded by the project to the Google platform). Furthermore, this project decided that digital delivery was best kept away from social media platforms in order to maintain control over data storage and usage, and so a text messaging intervention service was developed in preference to a social network-based service.

Projects noted that they were careful around the language used in ads to limit the promise of what they could offer users by way of solutions and avoid over-claim. Action for Children reported, “We were clear with our use of wording with what we could offer, and every ad was associated with our charity brand.”.

Another ethical concern raised by the digital projects related more to safeguarding and referenced the ability for people to share information online, perhaps by commenting below project video posts on social media platforms. There were some concerns that this could encourage and prompt people to share private information about conflict and relationships in a public space, perhaps without thinking through the potential repercussions of doing this. Projects report that the ethical considerations here are delicate as such information is freely shared by the user, but ethically the project teams felt they had a responsibility to ensure that the video comments were monitored in some way, and that any potentially concerning contributions were signposted to relevant content or services. These events did occur for one of the digital projects, but not in significant volume.

Ethical considerations raised by the interventions themselves were similar for projects across the Challenge Fund, and included the need to ensure that users – and especially vulnerable users – were supported with any issues that may have arisen through the work or its related research, that they were properly and fully consented, and that aftercare support was available where it was needed. This was particularly relevant where parents may have gone through a realisation to become newly ‘conflict-aware’, and effective signposting or service referrals were necessary.

3.2.8 Sustainability

For digital projects, there is hope that the content now produced will be used at very low cost well into the future. Sustainable design has been key to this result. OnePlusOne has said that they believe the digital Me, You and Baby too programme could be “rolled out across frontline practice nationally” including to Family Support Workers, Health Visitors, midwives, and those working in social care. Many elements of project work will become available to local authorities to licence once the grant has ended, and the upskilling of practitioners which has already occurred will continue to benefit parents in their areas through their increased knowledge and confidence. The new resources could in future be incorporated into existing programmes that address issues around parental conflict.

Networked approaches have helped to ensure that project leaders are confident in their views of the sustainability of the work carried out, with many organisations now engaged and on board, and reported to be keen to share the produced resources with their parents and practitioners.

Ongoing low-level upkeep of some resources, such as website landing pages or staffing to monitor posts and feedback, will be necessary to sustain access to these newly established resources. Others have been designed to be open-source and transferable to other development teams to facilitate future progression of the resources. There is a text based support aspect that would need a small amount of funding to continue via the Twilio service, and this would be the same for any further practitioner training sessions carried out as well as the staffing of the online chat service by a parental conflict practitioner.

There may be challenges for follow-up support where one project noted that professionals newly trained in relationship support were not able to find referral services for their users needing support. The digital content may fill some service gaps around resources for parents but may also generate demand for higher level support where conflict situations are more advanced but previously unrecognised.

Future project aspirations include the development of more digital resources to support rollout and sustainability including a training video for frontline workers, and the further development of content to try to effect and measure changes in individual behaviour. New product iterations to ensure that a broader range of parents are supported would be another future project ambition.

The digital projects have done a good job of ensuring that the work they have been funded to do is both sustainable for the future in its current format, and able to be built on and developed over time as funding allows. Future digital work should similarly ensure sustainable design practices are used from the outset to maximise the sustainability of funded products.

3.3 Supporting participants

3.3.1 Engagement

Target groups for Digital Support projects

The digital projects all targeted similar groups in response to the Challenge Fund brief: low-income parents with low digital literacy, with some variations in focus: two of the projects focused on parents in the perinatal period and with young children based on their own research that this is a time when parental conflict is likely to be higher. The projects targeted parents regardless of their relationship status (together or separated).

Table 4: How content was distributed and how this affected engagement numbers

Comparison of engagement method and project reach*

Organisation	Method of engagement/platform	Project reach
Action for Children	Targeted advertising towards text messaging service	255 sign-ups, 167 completions
OnePlusOne (SDF + Digital)	Additional content on Click Relationships and a Baby Buddy app plus the Listening Room on Click Relationships	7,334 users accessing resource
Good Things Foundation	Story-based video content distributed on social media	834,797 video views

*Project budgets varied, and this will also have influenced project reach.

All digital projects reached more parents than originally anticipated. Parents were targeted using a number of methods including blended online provision with face-to-face support, and paid advertising on Google and Facebook. The most effective method for reaching users was social media: by distributing behaviour-modelling-training videos on Facebook and YouTube, Good Things Foundation achieved over 840,000 views (receiving 6,500 views on the accompanying website).

By comparison, a project delivering intervention by text message achieved 255 sign ups, and an existing parent-focused app engaged more than 7,000 users with RPC content. It should be noted that project budgets varied, and this will have influenced reach. The varying levels of reach also partly reflect the level of engagement required (it is less commitment for the user to watch a video than sign up to a text messaging service or even visit a website). It can also be attributed to the range of effective options for reaching users on social media: paid advertising; users sharing within their own social feeds; and the use of parent ‘influencers’. Although social media channels achieved higher engagement numbers, it was reported that opportunities to measure the quality of engagement or impact of the intervention were restricted: projects commented that their findings were limited to the analytics provided by Facebook and YouTube.

Paid targeted advertising an effective method for engaging parents

The digital projects that used paid targeted advertising via Google/YouTube or Facebook found it to be a highly effective method for reaching and engaging parents: in Action for Children’s project it accounted for 75% of sign-ups, and of the over 840,000 views achieved by Good Things Foundation, more than 460,000 of these were achieved through paid advertising. When targeting low-income parents, projects focused on postcode targeting in deprived locations in the UK, and this was found to be the best approach in the absence of accurate income-based targeting.

Terminology in paid targeted advertising

Terminology was key to the success of targeted advertising: all projects concluded in their discovery phases that parents do not use terms associated with ‘parental conflict’ when searching for relationship or family support online. Projects tested a range of terms in adverts and found that terms relating to common situations or issues (such as “no time alone after baby”) generated the highest reach and click-through rates.

An example was raised by OnePlusOne of a user who was a single parent and had felt excluded from engaging with online content because of the featured programme name ‘You and Your Partner’ on the Baby Buddy app. This was appropriately managed by the project team as a targeting issue, and adjustments were made so that known single parents were not approached with the programme. Other content on Baby Buddy, tailored to single parents continued to be available.

3.3.2 User needs

Delivering content in trusted spaces and using right language

All digital projects developed interventions that met user need in terms of language and platform in order to effectively reach low-income, low-literacy and low digital skill parents. This included using simple language; ensuring short user journeys and delivering content on platforms and in formats that were trusted and familiar. Projects explored with parents which online spaces were most trusted and ensured these were used as distribution channels to increase the chance of success of the digital content.

Understanding of parental conflict

One of the most significant user needs identified by all of the digital projects was the need for parents to have a greater understanding of parental conflict and the range of behaviours it covers. There was some understanding of the effect conflict can have on children, and this was a key motivator for changing behaviour. However, projects reported that although parents demonstrated an understanding of the negative effects on children, they did not demonstrate knowledge of the full range of behaviours that could have a negative effect. Projects found success using digital methods (such as behaviour-modelling-training) that demonstrated behaviours and their associated effects on children and gave opportunity for reflection.

Action for Children reported that practitioners were more likely to work with one parent (usually the mother), with a lack of cooperation from their partner. In such cases, practitioners observed a risk of escalation of conflict when one parent followed steps alone to make improvements.

Engaging dads

Projects reported difficulties in engaging dads in user research and testing across the board, with mothers more likely to engage and seek support for conflict situations. Further research is therefore needed to explore how best to meet the needs of fathers in reducing parental conflict.

3.3.3 Attitudes to parental conflict

All digital projects found issues with the term ‘conflict’, both in terms of parents identifying their behaviour as such, and with the stigma associated with being in conflict presenting a possible barrier to parents engaging with materials online. Projects reported that when presenting parents with ideas around conflict, they often associated it with severe or abusive behaviour and therefore tended to disengage or not relate their own behaviours to it. Projects also found that parents were reluctant to discuss or share their own experiences of conflict for fear of being judged.

Key areas where associations with the term ‘conflict’ were addressed in project delivery included:

• Targeting and engagement: language used in advertising focused on relatable terms and phrases, as projects discovered that parents did not use the term ‘conflict’ when searching for help online.
• Content development and positioning: content was developed to be relatable and non-judgmental, as projects found that parents were sensitive to perceived criticism. Action for Children reported that parents preferred to speak to role models in the parenting community rather than an ‘expert’.
• Sharing and discovery of content: projects found the most success sharing via advocates and trusted sites and networks. Good Things Foundation reported particular success sharing via parent influencers, removing stigma and providing relatability.

Language that proved to be successful for the projects when engaging parents included:

• arguments/disagreements – “we all argue”
• everyday challenges and stresses
• communication
• relationship issues
• family life
• how parenthood changes your relationship with your partner

Using digital content to demonstrate behaviours and their effects

One of the key findings reported by the projects was that the term ‘conflict’ referred to a much wider range of behaviours than parents realised, with a lack of awareness of low-level conflict and the effects it can have. Good Things Foundation used story-based video content to demonstrate parental conflicts and reported that parents were able to draw from their own life experiences and saw them reflected in the stories. Projects reported varying levels of awareness and knowledge of the negative effects parental conflict can have on children. In some cases, parents were aware of the negative effects arguing could have, but limitations of what they believed conflict to be meant that they were not aware of that this might apply to their behaviour. Projects reported that effects on children were however a key motivator – often it is children’s symptoms that are searched for online (not knowing it might be the result of parental conflict), and Good Things Foundation reported the effect on children being one of the biggest motivator for parents to change their behaviour. In this project, placing the child at the centre of the story in digital content was found to be a successful method for engaging parents.

Gender and cultural differences in attitudes to conflict

Common in the digital projects were findings relating to gender and cultural differences in attitudes to conflict. Good Things Foundation reported a noticeable difference between how White British or Black British groups perceived conflict versus South Asian and Muslim parents, with the former identifying low-level conflict as less affecting than the latter. Black British parents found the conflict in the videos “tame”, in contrast to South Asian and Muslim parents, some of whom found the videos to be upsetting due to the level of conflict displayed. All parents, regardless of ethnicity, were aware of the impact of conflict on their children, however.

Projects reported difficulty in engaging with dads, with men tending to see relationships as more of a private matter and being more likely to respond to practical rather than emotional support. Action for Children reported that men in the low-income target groups often demonstrated traditional views on gendered roles in parenting. This influenced how they viewed their parenting responsibilities versus the mother’s, influencing their attitude to conflict and how effectively they could be targeted online.

3.3.4 Outcomes and impact

Projects reflected on the outcomes they planned to achieve through their interventions. Although approaches to delivery were different, there were clear commonalities in the aims of the services. All three intended to achieve a level of behaviour change amongst parents; to support parents to identify conflict and enable them to manage conflict more effectively. Good Things Foundation and OnePlusOne both wanted to achieve improved understanding of conflict amongst practitioners and build their confidence in addressing the subject with parents.

While it was potentially more challenging for digital projects to collect information on outcomes for service users, two projects were able to conduct pre- and post- intervention surveys with parents. Action for Children experienced a low response rate to their post-intervention survey (47 responses), so caveated their findings on that basis. However, they also conducted a small number of qualitative interviews and focus groups, so were able to cross-reference survey results with the outcome of those discussions. Good Things Foundation conducted qualitative research with parents after showing them the videos produced for the project. Furthermore, the two projects engaging with practitioners also ensured their views were collected through feedback surveys and interviews.

Impact on participant behaviour

The research conducted by the projects suggested that the primary intended outcome (and that of the Challenge Fund programme as a whole) was achieved; survey results and interviews alike flagged how parents had become more aware of conflict in their relationships and how that might impact on their children. In Good Things Foundation’s video-based project, parents reported being more mindful about how they behaved in front of their children. One parent noted that the service had benefitted them “by helping me to become more self-aware of how our words and actions as parents can affect our children indirectly, without thinking about it”. They also reported how parents displayed a readiness to reassess their approach to communication rather than rushing into an argument. One mother reported that “I definitely stand back, and I’ll wait…. Whereas normally I would just blow.”

Although parents acknowledged that it was difficult to change their learned behaviour, particularly when under stress, they largely believed that the videos had equipped them with tools to draw on in these circumstances.

But I think, just being aware and noticing when things are escalating and being able to step back from them and just taking even just ten seconds to think, okay, things are escalating. I don’t want to do this, and there must be a better way of getting what you want in the situation or moving forward in the situation. I think, just that kind of, internally, being able to stop for a second.

[Parent]

These findings were reflected in results for Action for Children’s text message-based project, where the project’s survey showed that parents had improved their ability to communicate more calmly with each other. For example, after using the service a higher proportion (51%) reported that they were often or very often able to tell their partner why they were feeling stressed or upset and not take out their stress on their partner, than before the service (28%). Similarly, the proportion of respondents selecting never or rarely to this statement reduced from 36% to 11% before and after the intervention, respectively.

Action for Children found that a number of outcomes were achieved over and above those which they had intended at the outset of the project. Their research surmised that the intervention had:

• encouraged positive thinking about relationships
• provided a positive impact on participants’ wellbeing
• encouraged self-reflection and self-awareness

Users of the service reported improved relationships with others in their lives too, such as their children. As one noted, “My son said: ‘Mum you’ve had a head transplant.’ Cause I used to bite back at him as well but now I’m not doing it.”

At OnePlusOne’s digital project, results of the pre- and post- intervention survey followed a similar trajectory; service users reported decreased levels of conflict and a moderate increase in couple satisfaction. However, there were no significant changes in levels of dyadic coping – that is, the way couples cope with stress together. When asked what they had learned from using the resource, users’ comments suggest that they had understood the key messages of managing stress, strengthening communication, and supporting each other. Many users noted that the resource had raised their awareness of the impact of having a baby on a relationship and vice versa. Improved communication techniques were the main thing that parents felt they were doing differently. Many parents stated that they were talking more with their partner about their problems and feelings. However, there were different results for those referred to the service by a family support worker. Project descriptive statistics suggest that these users had higher levels of conflict and lower levels of relationship satisfaction and dyadic coping compared with universal users, who accessed the app independently. This group has a small sample size which makes it difficult to draw conclusions about this; a larger cohort would be needed to fully assess the impact of a blended intervention of family support work and app-based support.

Finally, it is important to note that Action for Children offers an online chat service supporting parents experiencing conflict. The grantee noted that their service classified 533 conversations as relating to parental conflict between July 2019 and March 2020. Although very few provided formal feedback on the service, 100% gave the service a four- or five-star rating. As noted elsewhere in this report, Action for Children has also been able to review the conversations and assessment of these has added to learning around what works for parents in conflict. Staff involved in delivering the service noted that parents opened up more readily about conflict online, and much more quickly than they do in person. Parents using the chat service were directed to online resources which were shaped and developed based on user needs identified through the chats. Interestingly, by quarters three and four of the project the organisation had observed a reduction in conversations about topics covered in new articles, thus deducing that parents were more able to self-serve advice and had less need for staff support.

3.3.5 Participant feedback

As noted in the previous section exploring outcomes, it could be challenging for digital projects to gather feedback on their offer. Low response rates to surveys were one issue, and although qualitative research supported findings, in some cases again the numbers of participants were low. As one grantee pointed out, they were also unable to screen parents using the services for their economic background or level of conflict (for example, if their experiences were tipping into abuse rather than conflict), and therefore were less able to assess whether the cohort was representative of their target group. However, despite these challenges, feedback from participants has provided interesting insights to the benefits (or otherwise) of providing support around conflict digitally.

For the most part, users across the three projects were positive about the resources and tools. Feedback from parents on content across the projects suggested that it was mostly relatable, understandable, and relevant, and parents also found landing pages to be welcoming. For Action for Children’s text messaging service, parents’ expectations of the service were generally in line with the actual offer. However, following feedback the grantee felt that using screening questions to direct service users to more tailored support might have been beneficial, but equally they acknowledged that screening questions can be a barrier to parents accessing the service.

It was interesting to note that parents accessing the text messaging tool used the service for their own purposes rather than involving their partners; indeed, some noted that telling their partner could signal that there was a problem and create a larger issue. This contrasts with feedback on other interventions where participants discussed sharing videos with partners and even other extended family members. In future offers, the grantee noted it would be important to consider how to engage partners without causing further conflict.

For OnePlusOne’s initiative straddling both Digital Support and SDF strands of the programme, the blended approach appeared to be particularly successful in terms of providing a digital resource for the most vulnerable families. From feedback, the initiative perceived the facilitation from the family support workers as being essential to meet user needs. The family support workers were able to build on their existing relationship and knowledge of the family’s needs to structure access to the resource in ‘bite-size’ pieces linked to topics already covered in their support pathways.

Across the projects, feedback from practitioners considered how the resources could be developed or integrated into delivery pathways for future use. There was a clear appetite from practitioners to continue to offer these resources, particularly following COVID-19 when more support will be provided online. Practitioners also discussed how resources could be embedded into other workshops and support offers locally; generally, feedback highlighted a need for resources such as those created through the Challenge Fund.

3.4 Building on DWP’s digital research

This chapter explores how learning from the Challenge Fund’s digital projects builds on the evidence provided in DWP’s Reducing Parental Conflict: a digital discovery research, which was published in June 2019 and underpins the development of the Challenge Fund.

All projects were developed with an awareness of the Reducing Parental Conflict: a digital discovery^{[footnote 11]} research and a concern to ensure that they were building on this and advancing learning using this as a starting point to inform their thinking.

The two fully digital projects went to lengths to specifically address the user needs statements derived from the DWP research and to gather insights around these to help build the evidence base. The learning points are therefore divided into four sections:

• learning relevant to targeting
• learning on digital content
• learning about conflict
• learning about the differences between audience segments, especially between BAME and White British groups

The learning from the projects shows the value of approaches that bring digital and sector expertise together with a strong learning strand. The digital landscape moves quickly and learning on targeting must keep pace with this. In addition, learning around social interventions in digital spaces is only now emerging and the following project findings show the value of supporting a shared evidence base on this. The digital projects have been able to contribute to the general understanding of conflict (and the behaviours around it) amongst the target audience. This has resulted in important new findings around the different perceptions and behaviours across audience segments.

Action for Children suggested two key areas for future learning. Firstly, to further investigate emerging findings related to digital content that appeals to a diverse audience by improving knowledge of the identification and management of conflict by different user groups. This is especially the case for LGBTQ+ parents, young parents, parents living in rural areas, and parents that are isolated because of their community, faith, or culture. This is particularly important because digital content needs immediate appeal for the broadest possible range of target audience members. This can only be achieved by pinpointing universal appeal, or failing that, by tailoring content to particular audience segments. This differs to the way parental conflict materials can be delivered offline, where the experience and skills of practitioners mean content can be tailored as needed.

The second area suggested by Action for Children for further learning was around traditional societal perceptions on relationships which are based on gender. The project feels that investigation of the conflict that arises due to this traditional view of roles and responsibilities between fathers and mothers is potentially valuable for future initiatives in this space.

3.4.1 Learning relevant to targeting

How can we better target online families in low-income households?

• Project research confirmed that target audience members had a range of language needs, including dyslexia, low literacy, and low English language levels.
• Interviews confirmed that using concise text-based information allowed users to take on board the information and increase understanding.
• Programme content can be made digestible to written comprehension levels of 9+ years of age and video prioritised over text.
• Project research found that most parents only use the internet on their mobile phones.
• Programme content is featured in mobile-optimised locations and accessible through smartphones.
• Project research confirmed the DWP findings that the ad tagline / title is very important and must be readable.

How do families in low-income households use/ search the internet?

• Projects replicated the DWP findings that parents do not search for parental conflict material or relationship advice online, but may search for issues related to their children, such as children’s behaviour or health, as well as general health information or local services.
• A tested ‘side doors’ approach in response to this by OnePlusOne placed relationship conflict content in front of a universal baby app audience with a new menu item called You and Your Partner. This approach was successful, with 75% of app users accessing the programme and engaging with it to varying degrees.
• It was found that parents can feel overwhelmed with searching for advice and support online – they sometimes do not know where to start or what to trust.
• Parents who seek online support (mostly for children’s needs) tend to engage with online sources featuring a recognised brand that they can implicitly trust, for example, national charity branding.
• Advice on parenting is broad and contradictory – there appears to be a lack of support/ guidance for parents with children aged 5 to 12 years, and an associated reduction in seeking help.
• While the DWP research had suggested that confidence in using information found online was generally lacking, parents who engaged with OnePlusOne online were found to be more confident in using the learning and advice. The team attributed this to effective digital design.
• Good Things Foundation found that many parents are concerned about their children’s overuse of the internet.

Where do families in low-income households go online and what devices do they use?

• Content was hosted in locations that were optimised for smartphones.
• Project research found that most but certainly not all respondents were Facebook users, and that few people were Instagram or Snapchat users.
• Facebook users involved in the research seemed open to the things their friends share. Some followed organisations and pages, and some did not. Many were members of Facebook discussion groups related to parenting.
• Parents were found to be selective on which parenting communities they join (offline and online) based on whether they could relate to the other parents and were therefore not judged for their situation.
• A lot of respondents were YouTube users, although findings were mixed around how many used it to search for help and information. It was mainly used for entertainment (both kids and parents) and news, although activities did vary widely, and parents did report looking for ‘how to’ videos on YouTube.
• Most people use Google to search for information and in general, participants did not tend to mind whether they know the source of the information that they found via Google or not. However, parents were found to be wary of websites or online apps other than Google, Facebook, and YouTube.
• When participants used Google in sessions to search for information, video was the most popular type of search result selected, the results were only selected from the first page of results, and results containing a list (such as “10 ways to…”) were engaging.
• Most participants did not distinguish paid ads from organic search results.
• It was observed that there might be significant differences between demographics in terms of gender, cultural backgrounds, age, and region.
• Projects found that a lot of internet usage may not be ‘visible’, for example parents using instant messenger apps.

3.4.2 Learning on digital content

Using videos

• The DWP findings suggested that videos are appreciated by parents if they are short and show a mix of professionals and peers. This knowledge was incorporated into the project design, and practitioner feedback indicated that this approach did allow users to engage with the videos and their content.

Seeking help

• For parents in conflict, seeking help means admitting there is a problem. This may make them feel exposed and vulnerable. One of the projects found that a person’s level of confidence/ self-esteem as well as their isolation impacts their ability to seek out emotional support in person.
• Parents do not want to fail in their parenting, Action for Children learned. Some parents in conflict may feel they are being judged about their parenting styles and are seeking validation of their methods, while others may remain isolated and unable to seek support.

Voice and source

• DWP research highlighted that users want a general mix of expert, role model and peer support. Project research found that preferences are nuanced depending on the type of support needed (practical or emotional) as well as how aligned the advice/ support is with the person’s existing perspectives. For example, some parents want reassurance that their decisions are adequate rather than being provided with an answer or new advice.
• Generally, parents included in the research preferred ‘experience over expertise’ when seeking role modelling of parenting behaviour and tended to prefer to speak to role models in parenting communities who they can relate to rather than an expert.
• Action for Children found there were limits to the support they could provide. For example, those seeking legal advice around child maintenance issues were directed to Child Law Advice, CAFCASS or Citizens Advice.

A diverse audience

• Good Things Foundation observed gender differences in how people respond to the video content, while working with dads. This reinforced DWP findings that men tended to focus on conflict triggers, while mums were more focused on the interaction itself and were more likely to mention the impact on the child (although not in all groups).
• Good Things Foundation advised that the disparity found in the target population’s definitions of what ‘is’ and ‘isn’t’ conflict supports the need for a broad range of content showcasing a variety of behaviours at different levels, to provide a true representation of the diverse audience base.

Including the child

• Good Things Foundation found that their video content was improved by including a child in the presented scenario. Creative teams subsequently tried to include the presence of a child in all the videos while at the same time avoiding creating a judgemental message. This was found to significantly enhance parents’ engagement with the content and made the impact of conflict much clearer to audiences.

Learning about conflict

• The early years, especially post-birth, are common trigger points for conflict because of personality changes, or parents not having so much time for their relationship. Separation rates for parents with children under five years are high.

• There is a misunderstanding of the term ‘conflict’. This leads to low-level conflict going unrecognised.

• Low-level conflict is normalised and often accepted, therefore there is a reluctance to address it.

• Parents have a passive attitude towards dealing with conflict, tending to downplay and avoid issues. Many struggle to take proactive action and do not tend to seek professional support (whether online or offline).

• There are societal expectations of relationships and universal stigma that it is a private matter. This gives concern as to how an individual would be perceived for seeking help on relationship and family matters.

• Project research highlighted the importance of local communities in a person getting support. For some, community links are critical as others can understand and empathise with their experience. For others, community can be seen as a threat or stigmatising.

• Resolving conflict and focusing on parents’ emotional needs and wellbeing is not seen as a high priority in competition with other issues.

• There are gender differences in identifying and managing conflict – men tend to see relationships as more of a private matter and are more likely to respond to practical rather than emotional support.

• Some parents are unable to reflect on their relationship experiences because of their own trauma. This can reduce their ability to identify triggers, react and take proactive steps in response to an issue. Things may escalate because it is ‘easier to avoid the issue’.

• Children are used as a tool in conflict, especially post-separation.

• Addictive behaviours contribute to conflict – such as drugs, alcohol, or gambling. This is associated with mental health issues and does not always receive support.

• While the earlier DWP research suggested that parents may focus on their own needs in a conflict, one project’s research suggested that parents are more often focused on their child’s needs.

• Research with parents following separation found that – where child symptoms of conflict are recognised – parents only recognised these symptoms after separation and have had time or strength to self-reflect.

• Parents did have the attitude that if a child is younger during the conflict there will not be a prolonged effect.

• Action for Children found the following issues around contact and child maintenance to be of interest to the target audience:

  • advice related to contact arrangements
  • advice when an ex-partner does not stick to agreements
  • advice for a parent struggling to see a child despite paying child maintenance
  • legal advice relating to changes in contact arrangements

Learning the differences between audience segments, especially between BAME and White British groups

Through digital behaviour research and user testing, projects identified some cultural differences between audience segment groups:

• speakers of English as a second language generally showed a clear preference for video content rather than text content as they found it easier to follow (although some preferred text content because they were more comfortable with reading than listening)
• BAME parents frequently mentioned religious groups on Facebook and religious content on YouTube
• BAME groups tended to use the internet more for educational purposes than White British families and often mentioned helping their children with their homework
• BAME parents were more likely to mention the impact on the child when talking about conflict
• there were different attitudes among mums from Pakistani families about parental roles and how to resolve a conflict and communicate with a co-parent showing generational differences within parents from the same culture

User testing with parents from BAME backgrounds highlighted considerable variation between cultures, in the level at which parents identify negative behaviour as conflict. Some parents of Caribbean heritage described a video of conflict interaction as low level and ‘normal’ behaviour between parents. Contrary to this, in testing with parents of Pakistani and Afghan heritage many of the mothers clearly described those same behaviours as conflict and related it to their own experiences. This also differed from the views of working class, White British mothers who noted that the content should show more escalating behaviour such as shouting and swearing, to simulate a real-life scenario.

4.0 Reflections on learning from the Challenge Fund

This chapter provides reflections on learning from each strand of the Challenge Fund, written by the programme management team’s thematic experts. It also provides an overarching conclusion.

4.1 Reflections on learning from the SDF projects

From the onset, the Challenge Fund was a unique opportunity in that there was an explicit focus on learning and contributing to the wider knowledge base of what works in reducing parental conflict. The Theories of Change and Learning reports completed by the projects encouraged an ongoing reflective approach to project delivery. This focus on learning enabled and encouraged projects to review, reflect and adapt, allowing opportunities to pivot their delivery models and test variations based on mid-project learning.

The following reflections will look at key areas of success and challenge across the programme, highlighting examples of best practice and reflecting on key enablers and barriers that should be considered in future programmes to reduce parental conflict.

4.1.1 Learning across the RPC activity typologies

As referenced in the introduction to this report, when the theories of change were developed, four clear typologies emerged to distinguish the types of activities which were being tested across the SDF strand:

• mediation activities with families in conflict
• testing proven programmes which are new to the UK
• testing proven programmes with specific target groups
• adapting existing parenting programmes to focus on RPC

Mediation activities

The mediation activities involved in the programme were both testing the addition of new components onto the traditional mediation experience. One project added specific education, the voice of the child, and a ‘whole family’ approach, whilst the other introduced counselling, triage, legal information, and communication sessions. One project particularly found recruitment and engagement challenging, and for both there were lower than anticipated numbers of families accessing the service (in part due to the short delivery time frame). A key factor mentioned in securing referrals was pre-existing relationships with referral partners.

In both projects, the additional elements proved to be effective in enhancing the mediation offer. For one, the inclusion of the voice of the child as a structural element of the programme proved highly effective – acting as a trigger to help the parents see things from their child’s point of view, but also improving retention rates as parents wanted to hear what their children said in the previous session. Both projects found that including wider educational elements helped the parents be better prepared and focused in the mediation sessions. For one, the use of counselling to enable individuals to address emotional issues before entering the mediation proved effective – with increased levels of emotional readiness to mediate reported. Both projects reported evidence that their programmes reduced court applications and saved time (and money) in the justice system. And both also showed improvements in couple interaction (such as greater awareness of negative impact of conflict on their children, improved communication).

There are clear advantages to the more holistic approach trialled by these projects, with the voice of the child and counselling both improving the couples’ readiness to mediate and thus increasing the likelihood of improved outcomes.

Testing proven programmes which are new to the UK

The two projects which tested proven programmes from abroad demonstrated two different approaches. One project utilised a formal ‘train the trainer’ approach to implement a specific intervention with high-conflict families; the other utilised a proven methodology from abroad and adapted the delivery to fit the UK context whilst staying true to the underlying theoretical underpinnings. These different approaches are reflected in the terminology used to describe project delivery, with the former retaining the programme name, whilst the latter was delivered with a new programme name in the UK. Therefore, the conclusions which can be reached within this typology vary: the first approach validates that the programme can be effectively delivered in the UK. The second approach validates that the theoretical principles underlying the foreign programme can be effective in reducing parental conflict in the UK. In both cases, positive impact was demonstrated (such as decreased levels of conflict, increases in couple satisfaction and improvements in co-parenting).

There are also pros and cons to the two different approaches. The first approach had the advantage of established, tried, and tested materials and delivery models, with a proven evidence base of effectiveness. However, it also brought limitations around flexibility due to the need to maintain fidelity to the model – this was highlighted through a couple of examples: the challenges during COVID-19 meant the organisation had to move to building on the underlying principles of the programme to be able to offer virtual support, as this was not part of the programme model; and organisations were not able to adapt materials to reflect the target audience.

The second approach offered more flexibility to adapt to the UK context, and respond to user input during project development. For example, following user feedback, the user journey was shortened, less text was used, and graphics were introduced to ensure clearer navigation. This iterative process would not have been possible if fully importing a manualised programme. The approach did, however, require significant development and design work before a product was available.

Both projects will have strong legacies which will enable the work to continue in the future. The first project has trained 20 practitioners who are now able to deliver the evidence-based intervention in their locality. The second project has an effective digital resource which can be used by practitioners to support families experiencing couple conflict, a needed resource that fills a gap.

Working with specific target groups

Three of the Challenge Fund projects focused on working with a particular seldom-heard target group, with the aim of testing an intervention proven to work with the wider population. All three of the projects faced significant challenges with recruitment, which is perhaps unsurprising given the difficulties traditionally experienced by organisations supporting seldom-heard groups. The targeted nature of these approaches magnified the existing recruitment challenges.

Two of the projects sought to test manualised programmes with a specific targeted cohort. One project did not recruit sufficient participants to draw statistically significant conclusions and struggled with the manualised nature of the programme as they were not able to shorten the delivery model. The other recruited participants from one of its target groups but none from the other target. For the one target group (BAME parents with mental health difficulties), the programme proved effective in improving well-being and reducing arguments. Both projects leave a legacy of trained practitioners who are now able to deliver the evidence-based programmes.

The third project tested an existing delivery model (counselling) with a new target group. As above, they were unable to secure sufficient referrals to draw statistically significant conclusions.

Given the significant challenges of working with seldom-heard communities on the difficult issue of parental conflict, there are some key lessons learnt through the Challenge Fund which should be considered moving forward:

• an existing track record and relationships of trust with the chosen target group are key enablers to secure participation in the programme
• where an organisation proposes working with a new target group, established relationships with referral agencies are critical
• even when referral links are in place, some communities may still be difficult to engage. Organisations should consider formally partnering with specialist voluntary and community groups which focus on these communities – either training their workforce to deliver proven programmes or developing partnerships to build bridges into the community (such as co-locating, commissioning outreach from community groups, delivering interventions from trusted community premises)

Adapting existing programmes

One project focused on adapting an existing UK-based parenting programme to include additional content on reducing parental conflict. As the adaption was undertaken by the original programme developers, the project enjoyed the flexibility of both worlds found in our second typology: the flexibility to respond to emerging needs, within a framework that would result in a manualised delivery structure that could be replicated easily.

There were a range of lessons learnt during the development of the revised programme:

• recruitment of male practitioners and group leaders contributed positively to father engagement, together with developing new referral pathways outside children and family services
• established relationships were vital to ensure local practitioners referred to the programme – parents were more likely to attend if encouraged to do so by a trusted practitioner. Practitioners needed to be comfortable and skilled in the discussing parental conflict to have those conversations
• feedback from the first round of delivery led to the development of workshops to complement the full course, enabling the project to reach a wider range of parents through offering support with less demanding logistics/easier accessibility for parents

Evaluation of the adapted programme showed that it is successful at reducing parental conflict, improving couple and parenting satisfaction, knowledge, and skills, and decreasing child behaviour problems. The programme leaves a legacy of trained parent facilitators in four areas across the country, and significant potential as an effective group-based intervention which can be replicated at different locations due to strong training and quality assurance processes.

4.1.2 Cross-project learning

There are two key learning areas which emerged that span across all the SDF projects.

Timescales

All the projects struggled with the limited timescale for the Challenge Fund, especially as there were a number of factors which required additional time:

• Most projects relied on local practitioners to refer into their programmes. Knowledge of the reducing parental conflict field, and confidence in raising the subject with parents, was often limited. Many projects had to provide training for local practitioners (or wait for DWP sponsored training to take place) before referrers engaged in identifying parents for the programmes.
• A huge amount of time and effort was spent trying to delineate between parental conflict and abuse, as practitioners report that this remains a grey area and needs to be judged on a case-by-case basis according to a definition of abuse which recognises non-physical forms of abuse, verbal, psychological, emotional, financial.
• Parents are reluctant to discuss private matters in the public sphere and seek help with issues. Culture change is necessary – which is hard to achieve in 12 months.

Engagement

As discussed previously, engagement with parents was a challenge across all projects, with everyone struggling at some point to recruit sufficient numbers from their target groups. There are several examples of best practice which helped to address the challenges:

• recruiting male practitioners to relate to fathers.
• including discussion of referral pathways in practitioner training and making it their responsibility to promote referrals locally amongst their existing networks.
• working with organisations who already have a proven track record and relationship of trust with target communities.
• setting up projects in areas where existing referral pathways are already established for other programmes.
• placing materials where parents are already engaging, on trusted platforms

4.2 Reflections on learning from the Digital Support projects

Engaging parents on digital channels

Projects in the Digital Support strand of the Challenge Fund found success in engaging parents on trusted channels that were already a part of their online browsing habits. This approach of taking content to users (as opposed to developing a bespoke intervention online tool or website) was in response to the brief, based on DWP’s initial user research that found that low-income, low digital literacy users were unlikely to search for or engage with bespoke tools or websites. This approach was found to be a success, with the greatest number of parents reached engaged via social media channels such as Facebook and YouTube or delivering content in existing apps.

The importance of well-developed digital content

Delivering content on existing and trusted channels and sites was a success in terms of reaching and engaging parents with information on parental conflict. Interventions on these channels are however restricted by the architecture of those platforms. This meant that content development had to consider the restrictions and content styles of the platforms and channels they would be delivered. In some cases, this meant drawing on multiple specialisms to ensure content was developed optimally both in terms of a successful intervention and a successful piece of digital content.

The importance of terminology

Terminology and positioning of messaging was key to the success of delivering RPC interventions on digital channels. Projects found that parents either did not identify with the term ’conflict’ or were unaware of the full range of behaviours it could refer to. One project reported a parent stating they did not feel a situation was conflict as it did not involve physical violence. Additionally, projects found that there was a stigma attached to conflict and saw in parents a reluctance to seek help or discuss their issues online. All projects took these findings into account and found success in both targeting parents and engaging them in the content by removing the term ‘conflict’ and using relatable, non-judgmental language that recognised the challenges of parenting. One project found success using parent role-model influencers, who recorded reaction videos. This was the first time this approach had been explored, and it proved a successful method of sharing RPC content in a way that parents found relatable, with many then sharing their own experiences in comments. The relatability of the videos and reactions from online parent role models (influencers) also meant that parents were happy to share with their own networks, which significantly increased the reach.

Children are a key motivator

Projects found that the effect of parental conflict on children was a key motivator for behaviour change and seeking help, and it should therefore be incorporated into digital interventions and how they are targeted. One project reported significantly increased engagement with video content once a child’s perspective was added and as a result videos were titled with the child’s name (‘Molly’s story’ or similar) to further enhance the child’s point of view. Another project found that parents are more likely to seek support for children’s needs – mostly unaware that this is often a reaction to conflict in the home – and the parents could be targeted with digital advertising via such searches.

Reaching more parents comes with some compromises

Delivering on channels where there is an opportunity to reach high numbers of parents means working within the parameters of those platforms. Delivering on social media where reach was highest, for example, restricts functionality and limits analytics available for evaluation of impact of the intervention. Using existing platforms also means effectively developing content in the style of those channels for the engagement to be successful. This means a new way of working and new specialisms and expertise required.

In the same vein, digital projects accepted that they would compromise on the efficacy of targeted ads on social media to preserve parental privacy and data. Digital projects should be commended on their ethical focus, for having raised the issues, and on having accepted reduced engagement rates in favour of maintaining high ethical standards. Future digital work should acknowledge that this is a relatively new area of challenge for those providing social interventions, and conversations about digital ethics could be sooner and more proactively raised at the outset of the programme, even at grant application stage, in order to ensure that all projects were aware of the potential pitfalls and supported to avoid and manage these in advance.

To achieve behaviour change, multiple approaches are needed

Projects using behaviour change theory recognised that in keeping with the digital brief, it was likely that only selected stages of behaviour change could be addressed. The story-based video content project, for example, found in the discovery phase that focusing on one to two of these stages was optimal (focusing on information and understanding). Understanding how the target group access information online (via trusted sites, social media, and on a smartphone), it is unlikely that all stages of behaviour change could take place via one digital content method. The video content project, for example, was effective at providing information and giving parents greater understanding. The text messaging service had greater opportunity to develop skills with parents and apply them. The likelihood is that to achieve impactful behaviour change, more than one type of digital solution would be required.

Further research – gender and cultural differences

All projects noted both gender and cultural differences in attitudes to conflict. Some projects found it difficult to engage with dads in discovery and development, and felt further research is needed to ensure their needs would be met in digital solutions. Others noted that fathers from low-income groups believed in more traditional gender roles in parenting, and this affected their attitude to conflict. A difference was also noted in the likelihood of mums versus dads to seek help and contrasting reactions to the content itself. Cultural differences in how conflict was viewed was also noted by projects and further insight as to how this affects attitudes to conflict would be useful.

4.3 Overarching conclusions

The Challenge Fund produced a range of lessons which can contribute to improving parental conflict in the future. Despite the challenges with referral and engagement, research shows that many parents would benefit from support – many more than accessed the programmes. The projects delivered as part of the Challenge Fund have expanded the pool of promising interventions. It is hoped that the lessons will provide a platform for future investment into this area – as further time is required to shift the culture towards seeking help when couple conflict arises.

The Challenge Fund has built on the existing research in this arena, supporting existing findings and adding to them extensively. However, a number of questions remain to be answered, particularly around specific needs for particular target groups. Learning across both strands of the Challenge Fund highlights that understanding of parental conflict is not universal, and attitudes vary depending on a range of complex factors including gender, class, previous engagement with statutory services, ethnicity and more. Moreover, practitioners and parents alike can find it difficult to differentiate between conflict and abuse.

The promising learning which has emerged from the Challenge Fund so far has encouraged DWP to provide funds for some projects to continue for another nine months. As with this first phase of delivery, at the end of Phase Two learning will be synthesised and analysed in order to inform future work addressing parental conflict.

1. DWP, June 2019 ↩

2. DWP, 2017 https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/improving-lives-helping-workless-families ↩

3. Early Intervention Foundation, 2016 https://www.eif.org.uk/report/what-works-to-enhance-interparental-relationships-and-improve-outcomes-for-children ↩

4. DWP, June 2019 ↩

5. Reducing parental conflict: a digital discovery, DWP, June 2019 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/808797/reducing-parental-conflict-a-digital-discovery.pdf ↩

6. 44% of Mediation Now’s total parent cohort were engaged in court proceedings. ↩

7. Reducing parental conflict: a digital discovery, DWP, June 2019 ↩

8. A/B testing (also known as split testing) is the process of comparing two versions of a web page, email, or other marketing asset and measuring the difference in performance. ↩

9. Click rate is the ratio of users who click on a specific link to the number of total users who view a page, email, or advertisement. It is often used to measure the success of an online advertising or email campaign. ↩

10. DWP, June 2019 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/808797/reducing-parental-conflict-a-digital-discovery.pdf ↩

11. DWP, June 2019 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/808797/reducing-parental-conflict-a-digital-discovery.pdf ↩