KAT GOLDSWORTHY: Welcome everyone to today's webinar. My name is Kat Goldsworthy and I'm a Research Fellow at the Australian Institute of Family Studies working in the Evidence and Evaluation Support team. I'd like to start by acknowledging the Wurundjeri Woiwurrung and the Bunurong people of the Kulin nations, who are the traditional owners of the lands in Melbourne, where I am lucky enough to live and work. I also pay my respects to the traditional owners of country throughout Australia, and recognise their continuing connection to lands and waters. We pay our respects to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures and to elders past and present. Today's webinar is part of a series designed to share examples of evaluative practice and ideas for collecting and using evidence in the context of Australian child and family services. The format is a little bit different to our usual webinar program, in that it will be a brief conversation between me and a guest. Today my guest is Hanif Jaberipour. Pardon me, Senior Advisor at the Australian Childhood Foundation. And today we're going to be discussing the national evaluation of the Bringing Up Great Kids program. Before we dive into our discussion, I do have a little bit of housekeeping to cover. So, this webinar is being pre-recorded, which means there will be no live Q&A. For those of you who require captions, please watch the webinar via the AIFS website. There is a link in the chat and a full transcript will be available. A short feedback survey will open at the end of the webinar. We would really appreciate it if you would just take a minute to complete that survey, as it will help us to continue this great webinar program that we have here. Okay, that's all I have to say about housekeeping. So with that out of the way, please allow me to welcome Company chief. Hanif, it's so great to have you with us. Hi, Hanif. How are you?

HANIF JABERIPOUR: Yeah, well. Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a great pleasure to talk to you and your organization and talk about BUGK evaluation. And when I say BUGK, I mean Bringing Up Great Kids.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

It's kind of a trap we all fall into, isn't it? Is reducing the names to these acronyms that we all become so familiar with in our work? Yeah. I think I mean, you're joining me to talk about the evaluation, of course, but and I think a lot of our listeners will be very familiar with Bringing Up Great Kids. I know a lot of people deliver it, you know, they've been trained in running the program. People love it. But for the people that aren't familiar, could you just tell us a little bit about the program?

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah. So, yeah, if you know the Australian Childhood Foundation. The Foundation its more than three decades that the Foundation is supporting families and children affected by trauma. But at some point around 2010, 2011, the idea was that we probably need to think about prevention as well. So, if we could have a program that is really, tailored for supporting families affected by trauma and which is also flexible for people from different cultures, which means that we need a reflective program rather than a prescriptive program. So this was the idea that created BUGK at that time. And so since then the parenting team has trained facilitators all around Australia and occasionally internationally to deliver to the parents. I think so far we have trained more than 4000 parents and 4000 facilitators. So this is really what the program is. And I have my own story with the program. So, I have been familiar with the program even before coming to Australia and yeah I was delivering the program in my birth country, Iran, to the parents. And when I came to Australia I found the original creators of the program. And it was such an exciting conversation between us.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Oh, that's beautiful personal connection all the way in Iran. Like, just that's really. I didn't actually know that the program was delivered internationally and it had such a wide reach.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah. Day to day we hear about we hear from facilitators who are interested in the program, from Europe, from North America, from East Asia, Southeast Asia.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

And so you mentioned before, I'm curious about this idea around what a reflective program is. Could you just maybe elaborate on that aspect a little bit?

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

So, the primary aim of the program is to increase reflective capacity in parents. And the idea behind that is, you know, we acknowledge the, the, the, the, the huge diversity in families and parents and children and the fact that we can prescribe strategies and techniques to the parents, you know, for example, someone asked me, okay, this is a situation. This is a particular challenge that I have. What should I do? And then there are many questions that I need to ask, okay.

About the whole family culture, the history, the age of the children, many different things. The background of the family. So what we thought was that what if we could support parents to increase their reflective capacity, to be able to be present to their own values, whatever values they have, you know regarding, you know, looking at their culture, they're coming from their background, their own parents, the society and all these different variables. And then based on those, you know, it's like the program is supporting parents to identify. What do I want as a parent? What are my values, and then how I can maintain those values in my parenting and in my relationship with my children. So, it's like training parents with fishing rather than giving them fishes. And then increasing reflective capacity, like increasing any kind of capacity comes with practice, with exercise, with repetitive exercises.

So, we support parents to look at their own values, beliefs, feelings, needs and their children's needs in ordinary moments of life so that they do this exercise and they build up this capacity. And then it is that capacity that helps them, that supports them in challenging times. So, I usually remind them, challenging times when you're challenged. It's not the time to exercise, you know. It's not the time to exercise. It's the time that you just respond with whatever capacity you have cultivated in yourself.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

That sounds very powerful and very empowering as a parent to kind of be trusted with the, you know, to be able to make those decisions on your own, just having the tools right, and being given those tools that you can practice and skills over time so that you can deal with all of the fun moments that are, you know, parenting presents in our lifetime.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah. For example, one of those capacities is a parent's listening capacity. You know, how do I listen? What are the qualities in my listening? And I've seen with my eyes, you know, how whole family dynamics have changed just by a parent focusing and practicing on their listening capacities.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Yes. You know, I can imagine that that is extremely powerful. As a parent myself. Yeah, that's a wonderful it would be transformational for many families. Thank you for sharing that. I would like to just move on to talking about some of the evaluation, you know, the evaluation things that you've been doing. I know that the program has been evaluated in the past. You're evaluating it again, and I believe you've been getting support from the Parenting Research Centre (PRC) with that, which is fantastic. I guess I'm just wondering what were the aims with this evaluation and what sort of design did you use to inform the evaluation to support the aims that you have.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah. So, the aim. Yeah, we evaluated the program in 2014. I mean, the previous evaluation, but we thought that we need a more current evaluation and a national kind of evaluation because, you know to get support, to get support to be able to spread the message of the program and the program throughout Australia and to get support from, you know, government, governmental authorities, you need to be current and you need to be formally evaluated. You know, they talk about this whole idea of evidence-based programs. So, we had this in mind and we were thinking that a current evaluation can be good to boost whatever we do using the program in Australia and even probably internationally. So, this was the idea that started the evaluation. And fortunately we got support from, from Target, to pay for the evaluation. And yeah, we discussed it with the Parenting Research Centre and we started the evaluation in mid-2022. So, what I can say, you know, the purpose of the evaluation was really to build the evidence to support the use of BUGK. And the evaluation was examining program implementation, examining BUGK family outcomes compared to the outcomes of families not receiving BUGK. So, we had two groups of parents that we were evaluating, what I call BUGK parents, the parents who attended BUGK programs and a comparison group, and then also comparing the effectiveness of BUGK to a comparable relational parenting programs used in Australia. A bit of benchmarking. Particularly we looked at, Tuning into Kids and Circle of Security. The other two programs that seek, together with BUGK at this end of the continuum of parenting programs, you know, from this side being more behaviorist point of view and our side, which is more, looks at more, the social emotional development of children. So, I guess we started by you know clarification of the project scope, and then we had numerous meetings with PRC to identify BUGK program processes and program logic. So, we had the program logic from before. What we renewed based on all the experiences that we had. And particularly we had a review of the program, and updated the program in 2017. So, we had to discuss all of these. And then we looked at our key outcomes and measures. We clarified those measures and looking at measurement tools. So, this was a very challenging part that we started in 2023, because it is a reflective program, it is a transformational program rather than, you know, being really informational. So, we really wanted tools and measures that can reflect this aspect of the program. And the big question was, so we started looking at tools that, you know, the PRC did a good literature review and, and the tools that have been used in evaluation. And while looking at those tools we were not sure about many of them that reflects really, you know. In many of those tools, we had lots of questions about, okay, how the child's behaviour is changing. And we were not sure if this is really a question that will be helpful from our point of view because, you know, the program is really about we are working in parents’ reflective capacity. So, when the parents perspective change, it's not like something that okay, overnight you see some big changes in the in the child's behaviour. It is actually, you know, most often what I have experienced in conversations with parents is that the child's behaviour hasn't changed, but the relationship has changed. The way I'm looking at that behaviour has changed. That changes the behaviour. So, this this is very important. And we wanted to find tools that really can capture these aspects of the program. Do you have any questions. Or I jump to the

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

I do, I do. I'm just like I'm just kind of soaking it all in because I think you've covered so many points around that. And I think your response to that question just highlights to me how deeply you guys at ACF have really, and PRC, have really thought about kind of what are the underlying mechanisms of change. So, this program in this case, it's, you know, relationship based. And how important kind of formulating that theory around why change is going to happen and really thinking about the outcomes. Right. Like not just doing the stock standard kind of thing or just trying to measure things based on tools that already exist. But you're actually thinking deeply around what do we need to measure here? Maybe we need to. Yeah, yeah, just unpacking that theory a bit and then finding things that are really going to, finding tools that are really going to get at the heart of what this program is trying to do. And, you know, that's not an easy thing to do. You know, you said 2022 like this has been a long-term project.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah, I remember years ago there was a mum and she came she, she was coming to a group that I was facilitating, and it was session three, and she came to me. She said that ‘I don't know what's happening in my house, but my boys are every day now. Every day they come home, they start talking to me about school. And it wasn't happening before and not even asking them. They just talked to me.’ And I said, ‘Okay, why is that?’ And she said, ‘No idea, but this is just happening’. And I said, ‘Okay’. And then the last session she came and she was in tears and she said, ‘Last night my husband started talking to me about his work, and it is the first time in 14 years that he talks to me about his work’. And I said, ‘Okay’. I knew the answer, but I asked, ‘Okay, what is going on?’ And she said, ‘Now I know because of the way that I'm listening to them, everyone wants to talk to me because they feel important. They feel valuable when they talk to me.’ And this is because of the exercise that, you know, we have a deep listening exercise in the program. And she was very much into that exercise. So, this is what I mean, that you know, how you're going to capture this. How you're going to capture this aspect, you know because it is interesting. At the end of session three, she didn't know what is happening to her. But at the end of the program, she had clear idea that, okay, I'm doing something and this is changing the whole family. The whole family dynamics.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Oh, yeah. That's a very powerful moment. I mean, I've just, I can just relate a lot of that to my own experience of parenting in my own home. And I can imagine just how incredible that must have felt for the person telling you that. But then also, obviously on the other end of it, and just seeing the magic of the program kind of working, and now you're doing this evaluation which will hopefully, you know, show that at kind of a wider, you know, at a wider scale or a wider level. So, I guess on that. Is the, you know, you're measuring outcomes. I mean, I'm really interested to hear a bit more about the comparison stuff, so I'll ask you about that in a moment. But are you, with the evaluation? Was there also room in there to collect the qualitative sort of data to have some of these stories come through, or was it more fixed on, you know, doing the kind of, the quantitative, standardized or the survey measures, those kinds of things to get the quant data.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah. So, we had questionnaires. So for the BUGK parents, we had one questionnaire at the start of the program, pre-program questionnaire, and then another one at the end, after six weeks, at the end of the program. Whether the program was face-to-face or online. And then a third questionnaire, three, four, five months after they finish the program to see what stays with them. And then other than that, so in the questions, there were space for more like qualitative kind of questions that they could answer, not just tick if they'd answered. But we had opportunities to, I mean, if they consented, we had opportunities to interview short interviews with the parents who have consented to get some more. And other than that we had, I mean our PRC colleagues, were interviewing the facilitators. Because we I mean, the idea was that the facilitators can see changes in parents that, you know like, the example that I told you, the moment that that parent told me about her experience, I knew that it's about listening. But it took her more time. So, there are many, many like this that as a facilitators, you see, and they can describe and it just adds to the richness of the data.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Yeah, absolutely.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah, so I guess, yeah, we definitely had qualitative aspects to the evaluation.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

And so how. Oh sorry.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

I don't want to interrupt you. Go on, go on.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

I was going to say how many facilitators were involved in the evaluation.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

 Yeah. So, if I look at my. Yeah, approximately we worked with approximately 45 facilitators. And. Yeah. And, so we were not thinking that we needed this many facilitators. Because at the start, our idea was that, okay, each parent group has between 6 to 10, parents. And then let's say that 4 to 6 of those parents will attend the evaluation. And then we'll be fine. We were looking for, you know, between 75 to 100 parents for our BUGK group and comparison group. But then what we realized was that, I mean, the data collection phase was much more challenging than what we thought. Because we could see that, you know, from a parent group that had eight parents, sometimes just one would agree to attend. And then because we had three questionnaires, you know. For example, we had for our BUGK group, for example, at some point we had 108 consents and from those 84 attended. So, we had a decline. Eighty-four attended the - I'm looking at one of the reports that I received from PRC. So, it is mid project not at the end. Eighty-four attended the pre-program and then 51 post program and then the project was that okay, so how we can follow-up so that we can get more and more. So, we had to work with more facilitators. And yeah, at the end we got really good numbers. So, we had around more than 75 parents for our BUGK group and I think 60 for our comparison group. That, you know, based on similar experiences that our PRC colleagues had, they said that the numbers are okay. You know, comparing with other, you know, parenting program evaluations that we had.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Well, yeah. I mean, it's just it's such a challenging thing if you, you know, there's so many groups being, you know, you're running so many different groups and obviously there are layers like different kind of mediators along the way as well. Um, involved. Yeah.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

For example, we had we had facilitators working in prisons and they were working with big numbers of parents, and we were sure that we are going to get lots of lots of, you know, parents from there. But at some point they opted out. They said, you know, we can't do it because our parents don't feel safe to do questionnaires to engage. And we decided, you know, not to overwhelm them at all. And then, you know, the comparison group was even more challenging because these were just parents that we had no, no contact with. And then we had to advertise through social media. We had to, maternal child health nurses. We consulted them. We asked them for support to introduce our project to the parents they're working with. And, I even made a flyer having a QR code to the comparison group questionnaires and, yeah, I remember I had a training in Queensland on my way I was just handing out the flyers in the airport in Melbourne airport there, yeah, wherever I was in Queensland, I don't remember. But as I remember, our, late CEO, Joe Tucci, he was saying that, you know, ‘You have to soldier on’. You know, it was an every day, everyday follow-up and everyday work until we got the numbers.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Yeah. Because you're having to follow-up, you know, with the facilitators presumably as well. Like, of course you've got the layer of I mean, there's so many layers, but you've got the layer of the parents in the group and then you've got the comparison group and it's, you know, for people that you're having to build relationships with. I mean, I know it sounds like you're using data from those other programs, I'm assuming, like the tuning into kids, and I'm assuming that's based on, like, their published evidence already. But for the comparison data that you're collecting, the kind of new data, like you're having to build those relationships, you're having to get the data from the parents in the program, and then you're also having to get stuff back from the facilitators, and I'm sure there were other avenues that you're pursuing as well. Like, it's a huge, huge effort. Sounds like a lot of blood, sweat and tears, Hanif. Y

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah, I guess so finally once we were done, I think around September 2024. Then PRC started the data analysis and reporting. So, we had some preliminary outcomes reported. So, higher parent self-efficacy, higher parent reflective capacity, closer parent-child relationship, less conflict parent-child relationship and improved child behaviour.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Well, that sounds very promising. And this is looking at it comparatively to that those comparison groups, right.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Yeah I guess so. Yeah.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

I mean it'll be. I mean I've got to wrap things up in a minute, but there's so many questions I didn't get to, but think it'll be interesting to, I mean, it sounds like there are just so many avenues as well that could be explored in the analysis. You know, there's obviously presumably the program is being facilitated in lots of different areas, you know, diverse population groups. You know, you mentioned prisons. I know that was excluded. But, you know, it sounds like there are lots of opportunities as well for some interesting analysis. So, I'm yeah, really looking forward to reading the reports. I'm assuming it's going to be published? I guess this is my closing question to you for our audiences who are interested in reading about this. When the evaluation is finished, is there going to be an opportunity for people to access the findings?

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Definitely, definitely. Once we already have started, have started presenting, you know, the whole experience of this national evaluation. So, we had a panel last year. I mean, PRC organized a panel in the I-CEPS conference, you know, the conference for evidence-based parenting programs. And, so in that panel, I was representing Bringing Up Great Kids, we had two colleagues from Tuning into Kids and Circle of Security. So, they call it the symposium. Yeah. It was a very nice conversation. I might call these three programs cousins, if you like. So, we were really close to the ideas. We were somehow, finishing each other's sentences as we were talking. So, it was a really nice conversation. And also this year, 2025, I-CEPS we have recently got our proposal for another symposium accepted. So, we will for sure have more to say in this symposium about the outcomes and the whole evaluation program. And recently, Dr Michelle Harrison presented in another conference that I'm trying to remember the name from the acronym. So, we are doing that and we expect the final report to be, to receive the final report from PRC in March. And then from there, we have lots of opportunities for, publication and for letting everyone know. Yeah. We have obviously done the evaluation to let everyone know about how the program works.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Well, that's a relief. I'm glad to hear it. I really, really look forward to, you know, some evaluations happen and they never see the light of day. So, it's, you know, we will. I'm sure me, along with everyone listening to this, will eagerly await to see that published version if we don't, if we can't make it along to the conference presentations. I think we will have to leave it there, sadly, Hanif. But thank you so much for joining us. I've really thoroughly enjoyed hearing about the programme, the evaluation. Of course, there's so much more we could have explored. But thank you very much for joining us.

HANIF JABERIPOUR:

Thanks. Thanks, Kat. Thanks for having me. It was a nice opportunity for me as well.

KAT GOLDSWORTHY:

Wonderful. I'll also just say thank you to the people that have joined us for listening in. Um, and of course, thank you to our wonderful communications team who make all of this happen. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the Evidence and Evaluation Support newsletter. You can do that by going to the AFS website. And, there’s a feedback survey will pop up on your screens at the end of this and we really would appreciate if you would just take a minute to complete that. Thank you. Once again, we look forward to you joining us at our next webinar. Take care and we'll see you soon.