ABSTRACT
Parenting is a delicate area for intervention of any kind, fraught with sensitivity, charged with emotion and often guilt. In the UK we tend to regard parenting as a solely private matter, and intervention as intrusion. But we know that abusive parenting produces abused children, many of whom in their turn will abuse themselves, their children, or those close to them. We know now also that confident parenting can produce confident children, and that ‘good enough’ parenting-that much over-used termcan be more than good enough. So the challenge is how to intervene in this process to optimise the conditions, skills and opportunities for all parents to have the chance to provide ‘good enough’ parenting for their children.
