Incredible Years Programme
This year Hill Croft School has embraced the Incredible Years Programme for our parents and carers. Sylvia Cardwell and Tina Donaldson completed training in March 2023 to become Group Leaders in the Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme.
The Incredible Years programme is an evidence-based early intervention parenting programme which focuses on strengthening parenting competencies and fostering parental involvement in children’s school experiences, promoting academic, social, and emotional skills, and reducing behavioural issues.
The Incredible Years Programme enables parents to have effective tools in managing their child's behaviour. It aims to give them new strategies as well as building on the ones they already use to make them more effective at home.
The programme builds on the good practice already happening within Hill Croft School. It links with our Getting Ready to Learn Programme, our Positive Behaviour Information sessions for parents and helps to develop our parents and carers understanding of Hill Croft being a Trauma Informed School.
After completing the Incredible Years Basic Parenting Programme training Sylvia and Tina completed the Incredible Years Autism Spectrum and Language Delays Parenting Programme in June 2023. This is offered to parents of young children on the Autism spectrum or with language delays to promote children’s emotional regulation, social competence, language skills, school readiness, and relationships with others.
The 14 week programme has been very well attended by our first group of parents. The parents have bonded as a group and have developed supportive relationships with each other. During each session the parents watch vignettes (videos) on the topics, take part in activities and role plays to practise skills that they can take home to their children. During each session we also look at how these skills are used within school to develop play, communication, and behavioural issues.
During the 14 week programme the parents and carers were given the opportunity to split into dyads and triads to carry out role play activities linked with the various topics of the course. The parents took turns taking on the role of the child and the parent working on topics including persistence coaching, interactive reading and storytelling and pretend play- using some of our favourite puppets.
Part of the Incredible Years programme involves home learning for the parents- with activities to complete with their children. Feeding back to the group each week about the home activities sparks many interesting conversations amongst the parents and Group Leaders.
The programme covers many topics including:
- Child-Directed Play Promotes Positive Relationships
- Pre-Academic and Persistence Coaching Promotes Language Development and School Readiness
- Social Coaching Promotes Friendship Skills
- Emotion Coaching Promotes Emotional Literacy
- Pretend Play Promotes Empathy and Social Skills
- Promoting Children’s Self-Regulation Skills
- Using Praise and Rewards to Motivate Children
- Limit Setting and Behaviour Management
On completion of the programme parents and carers are awarded their Incredible Years certificate during our Incredible Years Graduation (Review and Celebration event).
We have loved engaging with our parents and developing skills that will stand them and their children in good stead as they progress through Hill Croft School and beyond. The skills gained will not only benefit their children who currently attend Hill Croft but other children within the family will also benefit from the programme too.
The Incredible Years Programme has been- let’s just say it…. “Incredible!”
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We are very excited to bring the programme back in the next academic year. Keep an eye out for further information.
