Care for the Family
Care for the Family is a national charity which aims to promote strong family life and to help those hurting because of family breakdown. We do this through events, resources, training and networks of befrienders.
What people say
“Your course was invaluable. I’d like to repeat it for all our new parents.”
School vice-principal
Our history
Positive Parenting Publications & Programmes (more commonly known simply as Positive Parenting) had its early beginnings in inner-city Portsmouth over 35 years ago. We published our first Positive Parenting packs in 1992 and became a Registered Charity in 1996. Positive Parenting rapidly developed into one of the country’s leading parenting charities, producing resources and providing training for parents and those who work with them.
Positive Parenting was based in Gosport for many years. With support from the Home Office, regional work was set up in Basingstoke, Birmingham, Southampton, Yeovil, York and also in Scotland. In 2007, the head office moved to Harborne in Birmingham. In 2009 we became part of the national charity Care for the Family, enabling us to offer a wider range of support to families across the UK.
We produce a wide range of courses for parents, handbooks and other resources which are used in schools, children’s centres, churches, community groups and prisons. These are well grounded in research but have a practical, common sense and ‘user friendly’ approach that is very accessible and popular with parents.
Positive Parenting works across social, cultural and ethnic boundaries. The Time Out for Parents course materials have been translated into Urdu, Punjabi and Arabic, as well as most European languages. Much of our work is in supporting the statutory sector (local authorities, health authorities, schools and youth offending teams) through training and advice.
In addition to Positive Parenting learning hubs in Birmingham, Croydon, Falkirk and Rotherham, there are over 500 trained and licensed facilitators across the UK running courses and supporting parents. Around 8,000 parents a year attend Positive Parenting courses.
A major part of the organisation’s work is now in training the parenting workforce. Positive Parenting staff trainers have led extended government-funded courses for early years practitioners on behalf of Parenting UK. We also run Open College Network (OCN) accredited 4-day courses to train parenting facilitators in line with the National Occupational Standards for Work with Parents and provide training for local authority multi-agency teams across the UK.