Evaluating the Incredible Years Baby Parenting Programme 14SummaryThe early years ina child’s life are a period of rapid development and the evidence base for supporting infant mental health is presented in the introduction (Chapter 1).The Westminster government has identified parenting programmes are one of the recommendedwaystoreduce the current educational inequalitiesin socially disadvantaged families and theIncredible Years (IY) series has a strong evidence base for improving outcomes for children from three to eight years of age.A new IY programmes for families in theirchild’sfirst year is the focus of this research and this is the first pilotevaluation of the eight-week parenting group. This thesis contributes to the current research in the following ways: Firstly by reviewing the effectivenessof group-basedparenting programmes delivered in the first year (Chapter 2).A summary of the selectedmeasures and the data collection process is presented (Chapter 3). Secondly the development and testing of a new observation code for evaluating positive parenting behaviours with very young children,the Parent Infant Play Observation code (PIPOc) is reported (Chapter 4). The comparison ofintervention and control families’outcomes is presented as the third study (Chapter 5).The programme successfully increased the parents’ sensitivity but did not have a significant impact on the other measures.The final study (Chapter 6) includes feedback from group leaders and parents that attended the programme.Parent attendance was good with positive feedback from those involved with the group.Details of the time and cost involved in delivering the programme are also presented in this final study. The cost of the programme delivery compared very favourably with the costs of other parenting support.Broad implications of the findingsand lessons learned from undertaking the thesisare discussed in final chapter (Chapter 7)with suggestions for future developments.