People ordered to get help with their parenting skills say they have benefited enormously from the process.

They say they communicate better with their children, supervise them better and have fewer rows - and handle the situations better when they do.

Both the parents and the staff running the projects they went on describe them as very successful, researchers say.

There is even some evidence of a marked improvement in the behaviour of the children, too.

The findings are likely to bolster education ministers' belief that parenting orders - where courts tell people to get help - can have an effect on bad behaviour and absenteeism in schools.

Young offenders

The research evaluated the Youth Justice Board's parenting programme - 42 separate parenting support projects, set up and run by multi-agency youth offending teams across England.

The programme aims to help parents of young criminals and truants, especially those who had been given a parenting order, and the parents of children thought likely to get into trouble.

Each project was different, but they involved courses for individuals or small groups and altogether catered for 3,000 parents between spring 1999 and the end of 2001.

The evaluation, by the London-based Policy Research Bureau, looked at 34 of the projects.

Troubles

Almost all of the parents on them were white and most (81%) were female. Half were lone parents.

They had problems with debt and housing, health and personal relationships.

More than eight in 10 said they particularly wanted help in coping with difficult behaviour by their children.

Their attendance on the projects was good.

The report says: "By the time parents left their projects, they reported significant positive changes in parenting skills" and felt better able to cope with parenting in general.

Effect on youngsters

Only 6% were negative about the helpfulness of the programme, and more than nine in 10 would recommend it to other parents in their situation.

The young people who had been the cause of their parents' referrals to the programme were said to be "a very high need, difficult group".

Three quarters of them had behavioural and emotional difficulties.

In the year after their parents left the programme, their rate of being convicted for another offence had dropped by almost a third.

"These are encouraging results," the researchers say - but sound a note of caution because they cannot say how much the improvement was down to the parenting projects and how much other schemes might have helped.

For one thing, the teenagers involved tended to be set in their ways. But there were hopeful signs for the future.

"Many parents and staff thought the parenting of younger siblings might change as a result of things parents had learned."