The role that parents and carers play in talking to their children about money is key. If you’re involved in delivering or designing financial education support initiatives for parents and families, these reports will help to inform your policy development and practical solutions.
The Money and Pensions Service (MaPS) coordinates the UK Strategy for Financial Wellbeing by mobilising stakeholders to achieve a national goal of two million more children and young people receiving meaningful financial education by 2030. To help achieve this goal, MaPS worked with partners in Wales to develop and deliver the flagship Talk, Learn, Do programme, targeted at parents of children aged 3-11 years old in 2015.
Talk, Learn, Do aims to encourage parents to talk to their children about money and create opportunities for their children to experience managing it. It is a two-hour session that includes practical activities around ‘modelling money’, shopping trip scenarios, talking about ‘pester power’, pocket money games and more.
Building on this initial successful pilot, in 2019 MaPS partnered with Campaign for Learning to continue to deliver and embed Talk, Learn, Do in Wales, while also commissioning Arad Research to evaluate the effectiveness of the project for practitioners, parents and children.
In 2019/20, amid the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, the project trained over 300 practitioners from a range of sectors, including family support, housing, and early years practitioners to deliver the sessions to parents. Overall, the evaluation report shows an overwhelmingly positive view of the Talk, Learn, Do programme from practitioners and parents. It highlights what more could be done to ensure delivery remains effective overtime, including moving to digital delivery.
What’s ahead for Talk, Learn, Do
Next steps for MaPS include:
- adapting and digitising Talk, Learn, Do to make it accessible for a wider variety of parents
- developing Talk, Learn, Do for parents of older children (12-17 years old)
- delivering Talk, Learn, Do pathfinders in Scotland / Northern Ireland, and
- continuing to use insights and evidence to influence policy, practice and funding of interventions aimed at supporting parents to develop and improve the financial wellbeing of their children and families.
Keep up to date with financial education at MaPS
For further information about our financial education work including Talk, Learn, Do, contact our children and young people’s policy team on cyp@maps.org.uk. Sign up for our monthly newsletter and follow MaPS on Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube.