FAQs

No, however many local authorities requested to use our programmes through the exemptions process as part of the January 2026 readiness checks. After a thorough review of our evidence base, the Department for Education has said that:

“The Nurturing Programme and Parenting Puzzle fully align with the policy intent for the Parenting Support/ HLE service area.

We are content for [Local Authorities] to use the wider suite where programmes are targeted at families with children aged 0-5 and strengthen [their] overall HLE and/ or Parenting Support Offer.”

In practice this means that Best Start Family Hubs funding can be used for the suite of programmes from The Centre for Emotional Health, so long as The Nurturing Programme or The Parenting Puzzle (or a programme from the EBI menu) is being used.

Yes.

Children’s personal social and emotional development is a key area of the Early Years Foundation Stage framework that contributes directly to Good Level of Development (see Education Endowment Fund’s summary)

Good emotional health in children’s early years is an important predictor of child outcomes. Parents taking part in The Nurturing Programmes report increasing child prosocial skills and a reduction in difficult externalising behaviours that are sustained long after the end of the programme.

In addition, parent and carer emotional and health and mental wellbeing are important for children’s GLD. The children of parents and carers who exhibit strong emotional health are more likely to feel secure, develop self-regulation, build positive relationships, manage feelings, and develop resilience to adversity.

We have measured a significant correlation between the confidence and self-efficacy of adults, with improving child prosocial skills and reducing child externalising behaviours. For a discussion of how our data supports a link between adult emotional health with child outcomes, see our recent webinar here.

Yes, with a condition.

The Department for Education have told us that “as long as [a Best Start Family Hub] have a strong offer for 3–4s, they may use or continue to use the wider suite of The Centre for Emotional Health’s programmes where these are targeted at families with children aged 0–5.”

This means that if your offer to parents includes an evidence-based programme that has been approved for use by the Department for Education (such as The Nurturing Programme or The Parenting Puzzle), you can also offer any of our other programmes.

All our work is underpinned by The Nurturing Programme which is rooted in academic research, and provides adults and children with the understanding, skills, and ability to lead emotionally healthy lives, to build resilience, empathy and self-esteem, and to support positive relationships.

You can read about the evidence underpinning The Nurturing Programme on our evidence page.

Every year, tens of thousands of parents across the UK take part in our programmes, delivered by the practitioners we train.  We work collaboratively with local authorities to measure our impact, using validated tools to collect outcomes from thousands of parents and families.  To see the impact of our programmes, visit our impact page.

No. Foundations require a randomised study (or other experimental research) to score as effective. We haven’t (yet) done a randomised controlled study for a few reasons:

• Randomised controlled studies typically cost hundreds of thousands or millions of pounds. These are out of reach for charities like ours.

• Historically these types of experiments are complicated to do in real-world services – the prospect of parents being randomised to a control group without the intervention, or asking local authorities and parents to take on the burden of randomisation and data collection is not an attractive one, especially when The Nurturing Programme is already being delivered at scale in dozens of local authorities.

• We work closely with a group of local authorities in a data collaboration (our Learning Partnership) and the clear steer from that group has been that our focus should be on using data to improve implementation: engaging under-served groups like dads, understanding how services can be set up to improve attendance rates, etc.

• There are already lots of data on the effectiveness of The Nurturing Programme:

• • collected directly by the local authorities who use our programmes using validated outcome tools, that speak to the impact of our programmes. We shared more of it in our webinars: https://www.centreforemotionalhealth.org.uk/emotional-health/events/

• • lots of qualitative work has been done, by us and others that speak to the effectiveness of the programme in use in different settings across the country. There are some case studies on the Local Government Association Knowledge Hub, for example.

Foundations point out that their guide is not comprehensive:

“It is not an exhaustive list of all effective interventions for children and families, and interventions which do not appear on the Guidebook may be effective. Conversely, the fact that an intervention appears on the Guidebook does not necessarily mean it will work in your local area.”

We have been training staff in our programmes for nearly 30 years, and a wide range of organisations are using them. We would be very happy to put you in touch with others who can share their experience of our programmes and the impact they have had on parents and carers their relationships with their children.

For further information please contact Robin, our Strategic Head of Impact and Research, who would be delighted to talk through our evidence base and impact data in more detail.

A Team Training is a training you commission us to provide for a group of professionals in your organisation anywhere in the UK. This is ideal if you have a group of around 10 or more people to be trained at once. Most team trainings are for up to 16 or 20 people, depending on the training being delivered; please contact us or see the relevant training’s page on our website for the maximum number on a particular training. We can offer Team Training face-to-face if you have an appropriate venue and facility to offer refreshments, or some of our trainings can be offered online.

Team Training helps to embed the Nurturing Programme across a setting, providing a shared language and consistent approach. Practitioners will also benefit from internal support enabling them to have a greater impact.

If you don’t have quite enough to fill a Team Training, you could join up with another organisation in your area. For the best availability of possible dates for your Team Training, it is best to enquire at least four months in advance of when you want the training; we may be able to provide Team Training at shorter notice, but your choice of dates may be more limited.

For further information about Team Training, please contact Thomas, our Operations Lead.

Open Trainings are trainings we arrange both face-to-face at various locations across the UK and online. You can book places on an Open Training for one or several professionals via our training calendar.

Open Training can be helpful if you have new team members who are not yet trained with us, or if you want to have a smaller group of staff trained who wouldn’t fill a Team Training.

We release new training dates several times a year. For the latest availability, check out our Training Calendar. If there isn’t an Open Training coming up in your area or online, please get in touch with our Training Administration team  to register your interest, as we put Open Training on in response to local demand.

If you aren’t sure if Open or Team Training is most relevant for you, please get in touch.

Anyone who attends our training receives a certificate as proof of completion of the course. We encourage trained practitioners to attend Refresher Day trainings to continue their professional development. Some of our trainings are accredited by the CPD Accreditation Service. To find out more about our accreditation, please contact Thomas, our Operations Lead.

Yes, we are sometimes asked to provide training outside the UK and are open to discussing possible options for this. We have delivered several online trainings for organisations around the world, and we are also open to travelling for face-to-face training. Please get in touch for more information.

Yes. Those who successfully complete training with us to deliver parent groups can create an account for a restricted area of our website (the PGL Login), where they can then access all the information they need to enable them to deliver their groups.

We like to keep in touch with those we train and refresher days are ideal for this when we share updates, top tips and best practice, and provide an opportunity to raise issues and to share experiences with peers. We also encourage those who are delivering parent groups to visit the PGL Login area of the website before starting a new group in order to download the most up-to-date resources to run their groups.

Yes.

To be recognised as a qualified facilitator you will need to attend all days of the training.

No. Parent groups must be delivered by two trained Parent Group Leaders (PGLs), with each PGL trained by us in the specific programme being delivered ie. 10 week Nurturing Programme, Welcome to the World, Talking Teens, The Parenting Puzzle, Playful Parenting, or Keeping Your Child in Mind. The two PGLs don’t have to be trained together on the same training dates, but must both have completed the relevant training for the programme being delivered. Some of those we’ve trained have joined up with other organisations to co-facilitate and share training boards.

No: this is because The Nurturing Programme is broad, non prescriptive and inclusive. It is designed, and facilitated, in such a way that enables parents to consider how all of the content best relates to their child(ren) and their own individual needs.  This includes children with any additional needs diagnosed or undiagnosed.

One of the challenges of any such specific programme is that everybody’s additional needs are unique and, as such, there can be no one size fits all solution. The Nurturing Programme focuses on parents developing deep understanding of their children and nurturing relationships that genuinely meet the individual child’s needs

Many services have found it extremely helpful to deliver our standard 10-week programme specifically to parents of children with additional needs. This has proved an effective way of adding another level of support and connection for parents. As with every group, ensuring that this is facilitated in a way that meets the varying needs of all the parents will be key.

Yes. The Nurturing Programme puts connecting and building trusting relationships first. It is a relational programme that focuses on strengths, partnership and supporting personal power – our emotional strength to get our needs met and make choices in our lives. Here at The Centre for Emotional Health we understand the impact of trauma and apply this understanding both to the facilitation of all Nurturing Programme groups and to the training to deliver these. With this in mind, all of our parent groups are facilitated by two Parent Group Leaders, both trained by The Centre for Emotional Health in the specific programme being delivered.

Yes, and the process to do so is as follows. Requests to reuse our content are processed through PLSclear. Please visit www.plsclear.com to complete your permission request. You can search PLSclear by title, ISBN/ISSN, DOI, author, or keyword.  The PLSclear team have put together a video guide to help you know, if you’re ready to start clearing permissions. You can also visit the PLSclear help portal, where you will find a checklist and step-by-step guide to making requests through PLSclear, should you need assistance. The PLSclear helpdesk can be contacted at plsclear@pls.org.uk (Monday-Friday 9:00 – 17:00 GMT). If you cannot find the content you require, contact us at hello@emotionalhealth.org.uk and we will be happy to help with your request.

No.

Our programmes are designed and developed to be delivered in-person in either a group or 1:1 session. The nurturing environment, responsive relationships, and many other important parts of the facilitation – which are key to supporting parents and carers to develop their emotional health – are not possible to simply replicate online.

No. Our national network of trainers will train people in groups from one team or organisation (Team Training), or with people from multiple organisations (Open Training).

This is to help us ensure fidelity to the evidence-based programmes that we have developed.

Yes.

Trainings include the relevant handbook and parent book(let) for the programme the training covers.

We recommend that all parents & carers attending a programme have access to a copy of the relevant book(let). Other resources including boards (although you can make your own), games, magnets and more, can be helpful to those delivering. You can find these in our shop. 

We offer post-training bundle offers on resources – get in touch to find out more about our current offers.

You may find our Commissioner Guide to Training  a helpful document. This explains more about our relational approach, programmes, and the trainings we offer. If you have any questions not covered by the Commissioner Guide, please contact Thomas, our Operations Lead, who will be happy to help.

Yes. To book Team Training, please contact Thomas, our Operations Lead. For Open Training, we encourage customers to book using our online booking system, but please feel free to contact our Training Administration Team on 01865 401800 or by email and they will be happy to help if you need any assistance.

We add new dates to our training calendar every few months, so please check back regularly for the latest availability. If you would like to be emailed when we add a new training, please sign up for our termly updates.

Yes. To register your interest in a future Open Training, please email our Training Administration Team with details of which training you would like to book, your general location, how far you’d be willing to travel, and how many places you want. We can then add your interest to our database and contact you directly when a relevant training becomes available.

Yes, we operate a waiting list for all our upcoming Open Trainings. To be added to the waiting list, please email our Training Administration Team with details of which training you would like to book and how many places you want, and they will be happy to help.

Yes.

Get in touch with training@emotionalhealth.org.uk

Our interactive, online trainings (Team and Open Training) are delivered via Zoom. (Please contact us if this is a problem.) You will be sent a Zoom link and joining instructions in advance of the training.

You will need your own device to access Zoom; we ask you to join separately to any colleagues who are also booked on the training. To join the training, a reliable internet connection and a device with camera, microphone and speakers is required. We ask that you join promptly; the Zoom meeting may be locked after 15 minutes for security reasons. We ask that cameras are left on where possible during the training, to enhance the training experience for all trainees. Technical support is available from The Centre for Emotional Health on the day.

To use Zoom, for the best experience we recommend using a laptop or PC and that the Zoom desktop client is used. Alternatively, Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge browsers can be used. If using a work device, please check in advance with your IT team that participants have the appropriate permissions with the settings and software needed to join a Zoom meeting. You may be asked to enter a full name when joining if you do not have a Zoom account.

If you are booked on one of our Open Trainings, we will email the Zoom link and joining instructions to you two working days before the training. If you are attending a Team Training, we send the link to the commissioner of the training a week before the training for them to distribute to trainees; please contact them directly if you have any questions.