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What does it take to make online parenting programmes work for families?

In A fairer start
9 Jul 2025
Online

This event took place on Wednesday 9 July. You can watch the recording below.

Event recording

The opinions expressed in this event recording are those of the speaker. For more information, view our full statement on external contributors.

To improve child developmental outcomes and reach the UK Government's target of 75% of 5-year-olds being 'school ready' by 2028, we need to scale effective and accessible parenting interventions.

On Wednesday 9 July we explored how online parenting interventions can help close the early years disadvantage gap. We discussed the critical challenges and exciting opportunities for making online delivery of parenting support truly effective.

Practical insights were shared from three parenting programmes on how to support parents to engage with online delivery. Attendees of the event learnt about:

  • The ‘Playtime with books’ service, a promising online book-sharing programme. Nesta's fairer start team partnered with the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) at the University of Cambridge, to explore this programme’s feasibility for wider UK delivery
  • How the ‘Strengthening families, strengthening communities’ online programme was developed by the Race Equality Foundation to support parent engagement
  • How Nesta partnered with the BBC and the University of Sheffield to develop and test the ‘Tiny happy people’ text messaging programme and recruited over 1,700 families to participate during a nine-week pilot

The event was chaired by Louise Bazalgette, Deputy Director for Nesta’s fairer start mission. Joining her for the event was a panel of experts including:

  • Eloise Stevens, Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL)
  • Eleni Bloy, Race Equality Foundation
  • Christine O'Farrelly, Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL)
  • Lauren Liotti, Mission Manager at Nesta

This event was for early years policymakers, local authorities, intervention developers and those in the charitable sector who specialise in early childhood development. The audience gained valuable takeaways applicable to developing, delivering, and commissioning effective online parenting interventions to support families who may not be able to, or prefer not to, access face-to-face services.

Speakers

Louise Bazalgette.final

Louise Bazalgette

She/Her

Louise works as part of a multi-disciplinary innovation team focused on narrowing the outcome gap for disadvantaged children. Previously Louise was Principal Research Advisor for Nesta’s Alliance for Useful Evidence. As part of this role, Louise was evidence lead in the development team for What Works for Children's Social Care, while it was incubated at Nesta. As part of this work, Louise developed the Centre’s Evidence Store. Louise has a background in promoting the use of evidence in policy and practice, having previously worked at the think tank Demos (2010 - 2013) and the NSPCC (2013 - 2018). At Demos Louise researched policy areas including parenting, the early years and children's social care. At the NSPCC, Louise led work on a system redesign project with local authorities to improve mental health outcomes for looked after children. She also led the development and evaluation of new services for children involved with children’s social care. This included working with children’s practitioners to develop a practice toolkit for direct work with children. Louise is passionate about the roles that research and evidence can play in improving people's lives. She is a trained researcher in both qualitative and quantitative methods, specialising in qualitative research with vulnerable groups. She completed an MSc in Psychology at Birkbeck, University of London in 2018.

Lauren Liotti_final

Lauren Liotti

She/Her

Lauren works as a mission manager on the A Fairer Start team, working towards the goal that from 2030, every child will have the same chance of developing to their full potential in the early years. At Nesta, Lauren works to lead and deliver projects related to parenting support, with a focus on digital and online parenting programmes. Before Nesta, Lauren worked at an innovation consultancy where she led social impact projects, including behavioural insights projects with local government in the UK.

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Christine O'Farrelly

She/Her

Christine is a Principal Research Associate and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow at the Centre for Research in Play, Education, Development and Learning at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on early child development. She is involved in a range of work developing, testing, and scaling interventions to promote young children’s wellbeing including early mental health and language development. Christine’s work situates innovation in the overarching principle of participatory design with and for children, families, communities, and services. She draws on state of the art approaches in service design, digital innovation and coproduction to put effective programmes into the hands and homes of families. She is especially committed to bringing children’s own voices into the systems and services that shape their lives.

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Eleni Bloy

She/Her

Eleni is an accredited Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities (SFSC) parenting programme facilitator who has worked for and with the Race Equality Foundation since 2013, delivering the programme to parents across Kent and London. Eleni previously worked as a specialist family law solicitor in Greenwich and Lewisham, as a partner in her own firm and, subsequently creating a department for a new practice. She was one of the first solicitors in the UK to achieve accreditation by Resolution, the association of family solicitors. She led on a project for Public Health England, creating a toolkit for public health nurses to reduce the harm to children of non violent ‘frequent, intense and poorly resolved conflict’. This led to her developing materials for both an online and in person 'Stronger Relationships' co-parenting programme, supporting over a thousand parents across England with funding from central and local government. This work continues and Eleni has amassed considerable knowledge and experience in providing online parenting support in an accessible and inclusive format. Eleni continues to champion a better understanding of cultural influences on conflict between co-parents.

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Eloise Stevens

She/Her

Eloise is a Research Associate and a Child Therapist at the University of Cambridge. Her research interest lies in the development, adaptation and testing of early years parenting programmes for virtual delivery and for different types of caregivers. Her current projects include the development and testing of Playtime with Books, a virtual adaptation of a book sharing programme with young children, to promote language development and support the parent-child relationship. She has been a trainer and clinical supervisor on a number of different studies, testing video-feedback approaches with parents of children with behavioural difficulties, foster carers, parents with personality disorders, parents experiencing perinatal mental health problems, and teachers in primary schools.

Event information

9 Jul 2025
Online

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