A group for the parents and carers of children with severe intellectual disabilities and challenging behaviour

There is evidence for the effectiveness of parent–training programmes in improving parents’ mental wellbeing and parenting skills and their perceptions of their children’s behaviour. Group-based parent-training programmes are regarded as particularly cost-effective, though need to be supplemented with individualised work for highly-stressed families, and there is little evidence for their long-term effectiveness. There have been no evaluations of such programmes for parents of children with intellectual disabilities. This paper describes the content and long-term evaluation of a group-based parent-training programme for parents and carers of children with severe and complex learning disabilities, presenting with challenging behaviour.The programme uses videotaped modelling of children with their parents and teachers, with feedback from the group facilitators and other parents in the group. Parents often join groups expressing feelings of loneliness and guilt and with little confidence in their parenting skills. A postal evaluation questionnaire to parents who had attended groups over an eight-year period identified that 64 per cent thought that the groups had made a difference to their children’s behaviour and almost 90 per cent thought that the groups had made a difference to them. Most commonly, parents reported that the groups helped them to feel less alone. Inspection of referral rates to the local clinical psychology service indicated that only 31 per cent of parents who attended groups, subsequently required any further individual help with behaviour. It is hypothesised that the groups were particularly popular and effective as they reduced social isolation of carers.