Family and intergenerational groups
Family learning is about engaging parents, and other adult carers, in learning together with their children. Intergenerational learning involves older people and young people in learning together and contributing to each other's understanding of the world.
Many Transformation Fund projects involved family and intergenerational learning, focusing on:
- opening up creative learning opportunities to vulnerable parents and their children, using film or the arts - Coast Net, Art of Possibilities, Helix Arts;
- engaging fathers from families at risk in learning with their children - Family Learning Inside and Out involving prisoners, and Dads in Demand involving black and minority ethnic groups;
- giving disadvantaged parents a voice, enabling them to support one another, articulate their views and contribute to local family policies, and to develop learning resources for others - Lambeth Ambassadors, Gingerbread
- sharing skills and perspectives across the generations - Canterbury Museum, Time of Our Lives, Mad Alice Theatre Company, Shap Intergenerational Project
A number of these projects worked with Children's Centres.
Family projects usually involved a range of agencies working together. They all identified strong 'soft' outcomes, such as increased confidence and self-esteem, improved communication skills, and improved family relationships. Some organisations unused to delivering adult learning were surprised by these outcomes and the impact they had, particularly on the most vulnerable families. Adopting an informal family learning approach helped the learners progress in unexpected ways, galvanising parents and grandparents to continue learning within the family unit.
Projects demonstrated that:
- learning as a family can encourage the most disengaged parents to develop close relationships with their children;
- the motivation of supporting their children's learning can lead to extraordinary transformations in parents' and families' lives and learning;
- family learning can enable disaffected individuals to engage in local community and strategic developments when their views are valued, their experiences are taken seriously and they see the benefits for their children;
- intergenerational learning can increase communication and develop understanding between old and young, leading to reduced anxiety and conflict in communities and improving community cohesion.
One of the most important aspects of working with vulnerable families is developing trust. Many people living in disadvantaged communities feel undervalued and become distrustful of people in authority. They can feel that the public organisations they regularly deal with do not respect them, and they transmit those beliefs to their families. Similar issues arise between the generations in communities, where both old and young can feel undervalued and become fearful of each other.
Successful family and intergenerational projects developed trust by:
- working with organisations that already had a relationship with the families or groups they wanted to involve;
- treating everyone involved as equals, showing that their views and experiences were valued;
- investing in offering a professional service, by bringing in appropriate professional staff (e.g. artists, filmmakers) or training key staff in the organisations they were working with (e.g. prison staff, health workers) to develop appropriate skills.
Successful projects also involved learners in producing an end product, providing concrete evidence of what they had achieved and a resource that could be used by others. These included story sacks (Canterbury Museum), a drama and a film (Lambeth Ambassadors), support materials for other parent groups (Gingerbread Links) and an exhibition (Times of Our Lives), to name but a few.
Families are one of the most important factors in improving children's life chances. Parental involvement in school is over four times as important in influencing the achievement of young people aged 16 as socio-economic class. Family learning is the most effective way of involving the parents of disadvantaged children. It can improve communication and relationships in the family, raise aspirations, and increase the confidence and self-esteem of adults. This has a knock-on effect in other areas, such as progression to further learning, employment and community involvement. It can improve health, and increase understanding of health-related behaviours that impact on the family. It develops the skills and confidence that make individuals and families more self-reliant and resilient.
Currently, the government invests £67 million a year in family learning. Potential benefits from this investment include: increased health and wellbeing in families, improved behaviour and achievement of children, reduced recidivism in offenders, more parents moving into employment and increased parental involvement in schools and voluntary activity, all of which support a range of policy areas and also impact on the economy.
Similarly, intergenerational learning in communities can make a positive contribution to a number of local authority national indicators relating to stronger and safer communities.
Our Findings
Web Links
NIACE publications on family learning
A catalogue of NIACE's publications relating to parents, children and family learning, including many free downloads.
Ofsted report on Family Learning
An OFSTED report evaluating the benefits of family learning for participants, their families and the wider community.
