Dr. Stella Owens:

I want to talk specifically about the National Parenting Action Plan, which Deputy Ó Caoláin mentioned. We now have unequivocal evidence, nationally and internationally, that supporting parents produces good outcomes for children. That might seem slight, but we have not had that evidence previously and we were always focused on providing services to children. It is great to see that in the forthcoming national policy framework, supporting parents will be one of the key enablers. It is a key commitment from the whole-of-Government approach to supporting parents.

We also have a great evidence base from a range of programmes and approaches. It is not just based on programmes but also approaches to parenting which have been replicated and evaluated nationally. There are also programmes and approaches which have been around for a great deal of time including the community mothers programme, which is an inexpensive programme focusing on new young mothers. We also have a programme which has been delivered through the HSE since the early 1990s. An important point about parenting programmes is that while they can be expensive, the costs of not having them in terms of poorer outcomes for young people and adults are borne by a range of agencies at a later time. It is important that we encourage partnership approaches through children's services committees to ensure that statutory and community voluntary agencies work together to fund and co-ordinate services to support parents.

Dr. Eilis Hennessy was discussing a focus on public health nurses to provide early support and intervention for parents. It is also about sharing that support among other practitioners in disciplines, including early childhood professionals, speech and language therapists and child-care professionals, to ensure the provision of a community wraparound service for parents to support them ante-natally and post-natally, right through the early years to the age of six. The thinking behind the national parenting action plan is to gather together those who have responsibility in policy making and decision making around parenting with those providing services on the ground to action what we have been talking about. If we have evidence, how do we action it in such a way as to have good co-ordination from early years intervention right through? Parents should get a menu of options on approaches. Oftentimes, there has been an importing of a particular programme approach that has been given to or done unto parents in the community. It is not the right approach. This will provide parents in the community, whether disadvantaged or otherwise, with a choice of how they want to be supported in bringing up their children.