To ask the Minister of Health, Social Services and Public Safety for an update on the Support For Parents Delivering Social Change Signature Programme, including the number of families who have benefited from this programme since 2012.

Significant progress continues to be made on four parenting support programmes being delivered through the Public Health Agency (PHA) as part of the Delivering Social Change programme. These provide additional high quality support to new and existing parents living in areas of deprivation through positive parenting programmes.

Two of the four programmes are delivered direct to families. By the end of December 2014 26 Parenting Your Teen programmes have been delivered to 313 parents and 632 children, with 89% of families completing the programme. A further 117 families had completed the Strengthening Families programme.

The remaining two programmes aim to improve the quality of services delivered to families. Funding is being used to increase the number of organisations who deliver the Incredible Years programme in NI to the highest quality and adherence to programme fidelity standards. In addition, by the end of December 2014, a total of 342 early years and HSC professionals had undertaken Infant Mental Health training through one of 3 new training programmes being funded. The investment in Infant Mental Health Training has also enabled the establishment of a regional Infant Mental Health Plan that will determine the level of investment required beyond the current scale of training resourced under Delivering Social Change.