The Role of the Parent Child Home Programme in Supporting Better Outcomes in Education and Learning

The Parent Child Home Programme (PCHP), an innovative home based literacy and parenting programme, has been supporting parents to enable their children to have better outcomes in education and learning in the Dublin Docklands for the past eight years. This presentation aims to provide an insight into the PCHP through exploring the programme’s history, methodology and outcomes. Originally from the United States, the PCHP is one of the Early Learning Initiative’s suite of programmes aiming to address educational disadvantage in the Dublin Docklands. The PCHP aims to support parents to improve their children’s language, literacy and numeracy skills such that they start school ready. Trained home visitors visit the parent and child over a two-year period and bring age-appropriate books and toys to encourage verbal interaction, creative play and learning through play. The home visitors aim to equip the parents with the skills to foster their child’s development. Over twenty years of rigorous research in the United States has demonstrated positive outcomes of the PCHP at the individual, family and community level (Plymouth Public Schools, 2008). In Ireland, an external evaluation conducted by the Children’s Research Centre, Trinity College highlighted the positive impact of the programme on the children and families involved (Share, 2011). Furthermore, a recent longitudinal study using the first cohort to graduate from the programme found that following participating in the programme the children started school with the skills necessary to be successful in the formal education system