Triple P is unlike any other parenting program in the world, with benefits both clinical and practical.
Flexible delivery
Triple P's flexibility sets it apart from many other parenting interventions. Triple P has flexibility in:
Age range and special circumstance
Triple P can cater to an entire population -- for parents of babies up to those with teenagers. There are also specialist programs – including programs for parents of children with a disability; parents of children with health or weight concerns; parents going through divorce or separation; and for Indigenous families.
Intensity of program
Triple P's distinctive multi-level system is the only one of its kind, offering a suite of programs of increasing intensity, each catering to a different level of family need or dysfunction, from "light-touch" parenting help to highly targeted interventions for at-risk families.
How it's delivered
Just as the type of programs within the Triple P system differ, so do the settings in which the programs are delivered – personal consultations, group courses, larger public seminars and online and other self-help interventions are all available.
Who can be trained to deliver
Practitioners come from a wide range of professions and disciplines and include family support workers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, counselors, teachers, teacher's aides, police officers, social workers, child safety officers and clergy.
Evidence based
Triple P is the most extensively researched parenting program in the world. Developed by clinical psychologist Professor Matt Sanders and his colleagues at Australia's University of Queensland, Triple P is backed by more than four decades of ongoing research, conducted by academic institutions in many countries including the U.S., the U.K., Canada, the Netherlands, Belgium, Sweden, Iran, Japan, Turkey, New Zealand and Australia.
Population approach
Triple P has been designed as a population-based health approach to parenting, typically implemented by jurisdictions, government bodies or NGOs (non-government organizations) across regions or countries. The aim is to reach as many people as possible to have the greatest preventative impact on a community. The Triple P system can go to scale simply and cost efficiently. It has been shown to work with many different cultures and ethnicities.
Comprehensive resources
All Triple P interventions are supported with comprehensive, professionally produced resources for both practitioners and parents. The resources have all been clinically trialled and tested. The parent resources have been translated, variously, from English into 23 languages.
Organizational support
Triple P's dissemination experts around the world have experience assisting all levels of government and non-government organizations and are available to advise through all stages of a Triple P rollout – from planning and training to delivery, evaluation and beyond. Triple P uses an Implementation Framework to help support the success and sustainability of Triple P.
Communications strategy
An integrated communications strategy, which helps destigmatize parenting support and reaches parents via a range of communications materials, puts parenting on the public agenda. It creates an awareness and acceptance of parenting support in general – and Triple P specifically.
Evaluation measures
The success of Triple P is easily monitored on both a personal level and across a population. Triple P provides tools for practitioners to measure "before" and "after" results with parents, allowing them to demonstrate Triple P's effectiveness to the parents they work with and also to their own managers. computerized scoring applications can also be adapted to collate results across a region to show effects community-wide or within a target group.
Cost effective
Triple P's system works to prevent overservicing and wastage, with its range of programs able to cater to the diversity of parents' needs – from light-touch to intense intervention. It's also a program that promotes self-regulation and self-sufficiency, as Triple P gives parents the skills they need to become problem solvers and confidently manage their issues independently, rather than rely on the ongoing support of a practitioner.
On a broader scale, as an early intervention strategy, Triple P has been shown to reduce costs associated with conduct disorder, child abuse and out-of-home placement, delivering significant benefits when compared to the cost of the program. Read more about Triple P's cost efficiency.