About the Project

As a consequence of the pandemic and the resulting disruptions to home and community life, schools have faced great challenges in addressing the learning and wellbeing needs of students. While children’s wellbeing has always been a priority for schools, teachers have faced some unique challenges in supporting parents concerned about their children’s development.

The Thriving Kids and Parents School Project aims to strengthen the partnerships between schools and families by offering low intensity, evidence-based parenting support programs to promote the mental health, resilience, and wellbeing of Australia’s children.

The Thriving Kids and Parents School Project comprises three seminars for parents: The Power of Positive Parenting, Helping Children Manage their Anxiety, and Keeping your Child Safe from Bullying. These seminars form part of the Triple P – Positive Parenting Program and each provides a set of strategies for use at home and at school. 

Teachers from participating schools can access:

• a complementary webinar that summarises the seminar content
• a summary of the strategies from each seminar
• a copy of the parent Tip Sheet.

This shared toolkit of strategies provides a unique opportunity for teachers and parents work collaboratively to promote children’s learning and their wellbeing

This cohesive set of Triple P seminars will be offered to parents from 300 schools across Queensland, South Australia, and Victoria, with seminar delivery, resources and potential practitioner training covered by the Commonwealth Government grant. 

Each of the seminar topics: The Power of Positive Parenting, Helping Children Cope with Anxiety, and Keeping your Child Safe from Bullying, runs for 90-120 minutes, including Q&A time.

The seminar series is designed for all parents and likely to be of particular interest to parents who may have some concerns about their child’s behaviour, emotions and social skills or have parenting concerns and are seeking further information and support.

Following a universal invitation to express their interest, schools will be prompted to contact the project team for further information.

Schools can choose to:

1. access all seminars online via video conferencing software delivered by contracted, experienced practitioners (at no cost to the school).
2. nominate one person to be trained and later deliver a specified number of seminars (at no cost to the school).

To further minimise school workload, seminars can be centrally organised by the project team.

Participating schools will be required to invite their parents to register online to participate in the seminars.

The Thriving Kids and Parents Schools Project will be advertised through school websites, via school social media, or in school newsletters. The promotional materials will be provided to schools by the project team.

An information sheet with more details about the study will be available to participants on the study website, which is the entry point for online registration.

Consent will be collected during the registration process.  

If you would like to participate as a parent, go to the For Parents page to learn more about what is involved.

Schools will participate in three waves, with approximately 100 schools in each wave.

Within each wave, schools will be randomly allocated to:

1. receiving the seminar package straightaway (start now), or
2. receiving seminars 6 weeks later (start later).

The evaluation will employ a quantitative online survey for completion by participating parents. Quantitative outcomes will be collected from all parents:

1. before the intervention starts (Time 1)
2. 6 weeks after the initial assessment (Time 2), and
3. 12 weeks after initial assessment (Time 3).

The post-intervention data for parents from the “start now” schools will be compared to the pre-intervention data for parents from the “start later” schools (schools that started 6 weeks later) with changes over time being evaluated.

Parents will be asked to complete an online survey package containing a series of parent-report questionnaires, child and parent outcomes will be measured at all three time points, with surveys taking approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.

All measures will aim to capture the effects of the parenting seminars on children’s social and emotional wellbeing, parenting practices, parenting confidence, and the home-school partnership.

The Triple P – Positive Parenting Program is developed and owned by The University of Queensland (UQ). Royalties are distributed to the relevant Faculty, School, and Research Centre at UQ, as well as contributory authors of published Triple P resources. Some researchers on this project are contributory Triple P authors and either currently receive or may receive royalties in the future. However, none of the authors will receive any royalties arising from this project.