State of Parenting and Family Support Sector in Wales 2026
A Wales That Gets Help Early, Not Late
Information gathered from a range of professionals working with parents and families across Wales – via online survey, National Parenting and Family Support Strategic Leads Network meeting and at Flying Start, Families First and Children's and Communities Grant Network Meeting.
Executive Summary
This year’s report draws on wider insight from across parenting and family support services in Wales and highlights rising demand, increasing complexity and sustained system pressure. Neurodiversity (ND) and Additional Learning Needs (ALN) are the single biggest drivers of referrals, driven by long waiting lists, unmet needs and families managing challenging behaviour without timely support. Mental health, school refusal, child to parent violence, poverty, housing insecurity and cost of living pressures further compound family stress.
The sector faces significant challenges, including high referral volumes, workforce shortages, short-term funding and a system that is being pushed to prioritise crisis response over early intervention. Engagement is increasingly difficult due to stigma, anxiety, practical barriers and a lack of flexibility.
Despite this, services are responding with strong, values led practice, offering flexible, family centred and preventative approaches, improving partnership working and developing interim support for families awaiting specialist services. The sector calls for sustainable funding, reduced ND waiting lists, workforce investment and clearer national direction to enable early, effective support and better long-term outcomes for families across Wales.
Reasons for referrals
This year the single biggest driver of demand in referrals was in relation to Neurodiversity (ND) and Additional Learning Needs (ALN). Specifically related to long waiting lists, families managing behaviour while waiting for assessment and ND used as sole explanation for all behaviours, sometimes blocking early parenting support.
The other main categories of referrals included:
• Mental Health and anxiety across whole family and included emotional dysregulation, aggression, social media impact, parental trauma, postnatal anxiety, depression and fear of engagement.
• Non school attendance and school refusal mainly due to anxiety and ND needs being unmet in school. School refusal is being frequently treated as a behaviour or compliance issue, when it is often due to wider unmet need.
• Child-to-parent violence increased in frequency, intensity and complexity. Aggression driven by emotional dysregulation, trauma and ND traits. Parents feeling unsafe but fearful of statutory involvement.
• Poverty, Housing & Cost of Living pressures including overcrowded or unsuitable housing, temporary accommodation or homelessness. Financial stress reducing parental capacity.
Key challenges facing the sector
There continues to be a large volume of referrals and high expectations on staff to deliver high level support, in turn reducing the availability and focus on early intervention and prevention.
The support required for families increasingly needs to be tailored and mixed to meet the increased diversity of needs. General parenting programmes/courses are not personalised enough and are not always the best option. Building relationships and trust with families can take time and a tailored approach is vital, but it leads to increase in time and commitment from staff.
The sector is experiencing significant capacity challenges, including workforce shortages, temporary contracts and slow recruitment processes. In many areas, one team is expected to deliver all interventions, limiting flexibility and responsiveness. Budget pressures also mean funding is often diverted to crisis response, taking away from the early intervention approach.
This year engagement was highlighted as a big challenge. Many parents are reluctant to attend parenting groups due to anxiety, fear of judgement or stigma. They believe “nothing works” or have low confidence in their ability to implement advice. Working families often struggle to attend support delivered during standard hours, and the lack of childcare further limits engagement.
There is growing demand from families with ND and ALN needs, both in children and parents. Challenges include parents self-diagnosing ND and/or attributing all behaviours to ND. Parents’ own neurodivergent needs affecting capacity to engage with support. Long ND waiting lists and limited specialist programmes. Unrealistic expectations of “quick fixes” to challenging behaviour. Practitioners reported difficulty helping families understand underlying needs rather than focusing solely on behaviour.
Schools are increasingly reliant on local authority parenting and family support services and early intervention teams, often due to limited school funding and inclusion support. Schools are not equipped to work with families at home or outside group settings and there is limited awareness of available support and a lack of joined up working and shared responsibility. This can result in issues being “passed along” rather than addressed collaboratively.
The sector feels overwhelmed and like it is constantly ‘firefighting’ but is passionate about meeting and supporting families where they are at.
Sector's response to the issues
The sector is responding with strong, values led practice. They are working hard to respond to families' needs in each local area. They are developing joined-up, preventative, flexible and family-centred practice, focused on empowerment, relationship-building and creatively, removing barriers to engagement and reducing service fragmentation.
“Adapting the service to really focus on the first 1000 days, looking at creative ways to engage hard to reach families as early as possible.”
This includes offering flexible delivery, such as drop-ins, workshops and short courses to reduce reliance on 1:1 support. Offering flexible times (evenings/online), outreach in schools and homes, and informal engagement. Creating one-off workshops for larger numbers and shorter more accessible programmes.
To support engagement, consultation is taking place with families and support is being packaged different, not just labelled as ‘parenting’. Promotion is being revised and increased to ensure parents know what support is available.
“When booking home visits making them as suitable and achievable for the parents to engage in the intervention.”
The sector is providing more universal and accessible resources through Padlets, visual resources and videos. These act as early intervention support and guidance to ensure families are receiving support in a timely manner and in line with required need.
“Creation of Padlets to attempt to offer advice/ support as an earlier support.”
Specific courses or workshops are being developed or sourced to meet the needs of the large number of families on ND waiting lists. Staff are being upskilled in early identification and support to ensure families are able to access a level of support while awaiting specialist services.
“When delivering parenting programmes, we limit the number of attendees and provide movement breaks along with fidgets for distraction.”
“Revised parenting roadmap to include graduated response to ND - signposting to existing resources, interactive ADHD workshops, specific ND parenting programmes”
“Working with a range of multi-agencies to developing bespoke programmes for parents who are concerned about their child's development or if they are on the ND pathway.”
The sector is proactively driving forward a whole family/system approach, bringing multidisciplinary teams together, developing or building on systematic models to triage, coordinate support, collaboratively plan, joint visits and reduce duplication. Ensuring one consistent worker where possible to support relationships and trust.
“Collaborative delivery across multiple teams including health where joint visits are appropriate. Developing Antenatal support programmes to ensure the earliest of engagement and intervention to prevent escalation of family concerns.”
There is a strong focus on empowering parents and building resilience. Strength-based approaches, supporting parents to identify their own solutions and build confidence. Normalising communication, modelling attachment-based approaches and breaking challenges into manageable steps. Peer support and community-led responses are becoming more recognised as a valued part of the wider support and the sector is looking at ways to build on and utilise these.
“A lot of work on the emotional well-being of parents and building trust BEFORE being able to work with families in any other way.”
“We are trying a new approach using to and fro for speech and language, where the parents are filmed and given praise about what's gone well, and letting them choose what to work more on, to empower them rather than tell them what to do.”
The sector continues to support each other by sharing good practice and resources.
What Welsh Government can do
This year we asked the sector to tell us what Welsh Government could do to support or what one thing would make the biggest difference.
The strongest and most consistent messages included:
• Providing sustainable and long-term funding
• Investment in workforce capacity and training
• Prioritising early intervention over crisis
• Reducing ND and Mental Health waiting lists for specialist support
• Strengthen joined up systems
The sector wants clear and consistent national direction that allows services to focus on delivery and long-term outcomes for families, not short-term fixes or ‘passing’ families between services.
A stronger focus on early intervention and prevention, to allow resources and support to be evenly distributed across all stages of parenting. They want a Wales that gets help early, not late.
There is a growing urgency to tackle ND waiting lists. Delayed diagnosis places unsustainable pressure on families, schools and services. The sector recognises and is responding to the need for ‘in between’ services but needs further support, training and investment to deliver these.
They want barriers removed for families, which includes addressing childcare costs, transport, housing insecurity and complex grant application processes. They recognise the need for more affordable housing, accessible community spaces within walking distance, and flexible, longer timeframes to work meaningfully with families.
Finally, many stressed the importance of listening to local and frontline practitioners and aligning national programmes with real-world delivery, focusing on what works through evidence, and maintaining realistic, well-planned policy and practice decisions and commitments.
Conclusion
The parenting and family support sector in Wales is skilled, committed and innovative, but operating in a system that responds too late and asks families to cope for too long.
Long-term, stable funding that allows early intervention, workforce stability and genuine system integration.
This report paints a clear and compelling picture: families in Wales are facing increasingly complex, interrelated challenges, and the systems designed to support them is increasingly under strain. ND, mental health, poverty, housing insecurity and school-related anxiety are colliding in ways that cannot be solved through short-term and siloed responses. The sector is responding with compassion, creativity and strong relational practice, but is increasingly constrained by short term funding, workforce pressures, delayed specialist pathways and systems that push services into crisis response rather than early help.
The sector is ready and willing and with the right support, it can continue to build a preventative, inclusive and resilient system that gives families in Wales the best possible start.
