Why Reducing Parental Conflict Matters To Early Intervention

The Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) is a children’s charity and What Works Centre, established to champion and support the use of effective early intervention to improve the lives of children and young people at risk of experiencing poor outcomes. So why the recent focus on conflict between parents and what does this mean for early years leaders? Ben Lewing, Assistant Director, Policy & Practice, EIF, explains.

EIF published an evidence review in 2016 into how conflict between parents affects child outcomes. The review found that how parents communicate and relate to each other is a primary influence on parenting, and on children’s mental health and life chances. Although some conflict in relationships is normal, when this conflict is frequent, intense and poorly resolved it can profoundly affect children at any age.

The evidence described in the review showed what really matters to children is not their parents’ relationship structure (ie whether they are married, separated or divorced) but the relationship quality. It showed how destructive relationships between parents is associated with a wide range of problems for children and young people, including mental health difficulties, poorer academic outcomes, reduced employment prospects and poor future relationship chances.

None of this will have come as a surprise to those working directly with families. But nonetheless it was shocking to realise how little attention public policy had paid to the importance of parental relationship quality to child outcomes. EIF described parental conflict as a ‘neglected site’ for early intervention and subsequent EIF reviews set out how:

• Longitudinal evidence shows that parents in poverty or under economic pressure are more likely to experience relationship conflict, which can affect outcomes for children. According to data from the Department for Work and Pensions, children living in workless families are three times more likely to have parents in distressed relationships.
• Economic pressure impacts on parents’ mental health, which can cause relationship problems and difficulties with parenting. These difficulties can include reduced parental sensitivity and time spent interacting with their child, and can lead to harsher parenting practices, which are linked to future difficulties for children and adolescents.
• A focus on parent-child interaction alone is insufficient, in fact in a context of parental conflict even the best evidenced parenting interventions appear to be less effective.
• Support for relationships is not easily available within existing family services, and there is a patchwork of largely uncoordinated relationship support provision across the country, which appears to be inconsistent in level and availability.
• Families who stand to gain the most from relationship support are the least likely to receive it due to a range of barriers including lack of parent’s awareness, access or the acceptability of reaching out for help. This is compounded by the fact that many of those working in family services treat relationship conflict as ‘a private matter’, and lack the confidence, tools, knowledge and time to talk to parents about relationship issues.

All of this is important to those working in the early years. The risk of conflict between parents is higher at key transition points in family life and many of these fall in the early stages of parenthood — becoming pregnant, having a baby, or a child starting or changing school.

Children of all ages can be affected by destructive parental conflict, but they may be affected in different ways. Children as young as six months show symptoms of distress when exposed to parental conflict, infants up to the age of five display symptoms such as crying or acting out, and children in middle childhood (six to 12 years) and adolescents show emotional and behavioural distress. Children who witness or are aware of conflict between parents, or who blame themselves, are affected to a greater extent. This suggests that child perceptions of parental conflict could be an important focus for interventions.

Yet the presenting behavioural issue can mask the parental conflict cause, particularly for younger children who are less able to understand and articulate their emotions. They need sensitive and skilled trusted adults to identify conflict issues and offer tailored support or treatment. And crucially, these trusted adults need to be willing to have sometimes difficult conversations with parents to help them to understand how conflict is affecting their children and what they can do about it.

Early years services offer regular opportunities to build trust and relationships with parents, from the booking in appointment with midwifery through the development checks provided by health visitors and the interactions with children’s centres and family hubs. These are the moments which can normalise talking about relationship quality, alongside the other important conversations about physical and mental health, parenting, housing and money. Healthy relationships need to be everyone’s business. The evidence is also growing for interventions which can reduce the impact of parental conflict on children. They appear to have specific components:

• helping couples to understand the impacts of conflict behaviours, and what they could do differently
• focusing on stress management, effective coping and problem-solving
  building skills, through modelling, role play and feedback, to communicate more effectively and avoid conflict
• for parents in the context of divorce or separation, building motivation to strengthen the quality of parenting and not to undermine the other parent
• targeting couple relationship communication and conflict management skills at key transition points, as in the case of a child’s school transition.

These are very relevant to support in the early years, and many of the interventions with the strongest evidence are parenting programmes designed for the early years, such as Triple P, Family Check-up and Family Foundations. More detail about these interventions is available in EIF’s online Guidebook.

There are also important messages for early years leaders from EIF’s recent evidence review on Engaging Disadvantaged and Vulnerable Parents which directly relate to the way that services are designed and delivered, including carefully matching interventions with the needs, concerns and lifestyles of the target audience, recruiting practitioners with similar experiences to the target audience and making sure that staff have sufficient time to build trust and relationships with parents. This relational approach appears to be key to effectiveness in early years services.

Reducing parental conflict is now the focus of a national programme, led by the Department for Work and Pensions, and every local area is considering how they can take action, including through workforce training and targeted interventions. Early years leaders can and should be key champions for this work — it is the opportunity to show how secure foundations make a lifetime of difference. Find out more at the EIF’s Reducing Parental Conflict Hub.

Ben Lewing, Assistant Director, Policy & Practice leads EIF’s work on the early years and parental conflict, and supports local leaders and commissioners on the practical implementation of early intervention with a focus on systems.
He joined EIF in 2015 having spent the previous decade working in local government on children’s strategy and partnerships, most recently as a strategic joint commissioner for Solihull Council and Solihull CCG leading on early help in the early years, emotional wellbeing, support for children with disabilities, speech and language therapy and domestic abuse. Ben is social work qualified and started his career working in children’s homes in Birmingham, before he specialised in children’s rights and participation, working for Save the Children UK and the Children and Young People’s Unit.