THE HSE should provide funding immediately to roll out parenting courses across the State because it would save the Exchequer millions in the long term, a child psychologist has claimed.
Prof Alan Carr, clinical psychologist at UCD's School of Psychology, said there was strong evidence to suggest courses which focused on teaching parents how to handle children with disruptive behaviour disorders worked.
He said that on evidence-based studies he had done, two out of three people who had been through the Parents Plus programme (run by the Mater Hospital) had shown significant improvements.
Prof Carr was speaking at the launch of the Parents Plus children's programme, aimed at young children aged one to six, developed by Dr John Sharry and Prof Carol Fitzpatrick.
Prof Carr said the State was not investing in parenting programmes, but that it should be. "If it doesn't, children with behaviour problems will have more psychiatric, occupational and health problems in later life."
He also said that such children could later go on to have alcohol and drug problems.
"Such [ programmes] are actually very cheap to run and are very cost effective," he said, "but the tragedy is that the State is not investing in them."
He said parent training was invented to deal with conduct problems and to help parents to deal with challenging behaviour in children with developmental disorders. Disruptive behavioural disorders could include conduct disorder and attention deficit disorder.
Prof Carr said disruptive behaviour was very common and very troublesome and often very costly. He said studies had shown that children with such disorders often acted without thinking and had problems controlling their emotions and following rules.
They also had problems maintaining "co-operative" relationships with parents, teachers and their peers, often ending up isolated or mixing with the wrong kind of company.
Prof Carr said the Parenting Plus programme was as good as the best international programmes he had had seen and was "outstanding because it was local". However, he said it was "not just some local little programme".
Other programmes of note, he said, were the US-based Incredible Years programme, established by Carolyn Webster Stratton which is being rolled out across the Republic, and the Triple P Positive Parenting Programme, by Matt Saunders in Queensland, Australia.
Prof Carr acknowledged that the evaluations of the Parenting Plus programmes featured small studies. "We need large studies, with about 100 cases in each," he said.
Dr John Sharry, a developer of the programme, also said they were quite cost-effective. "Relatively modest funding can make a big difference," he said.
There are now three programmes, with one each for one- to six-year-olds, six- to 11-year-olds and 11- to 16-year-olds.
The Mater runs several programmes per year for parents and the course as a package is being rolled out across the State.