Providing more State support to parents during their children's earliest years could have a major beneficial effect on families, new research has found.

The findings were recently launched by the Centre for Mental Health and Community Research at Maynooth University.

They focused on the ENRICH programme - a five-year investigation into a new service called the ‘Upto2 Parent and Baby Programme'. This combines a number of different health and education-related parenting supports. It was delivered to almost 400 parents and their children aged up to two years in west Dublin and Louth.

The researchers found that parents who underwent the programme became more satisfied and confident in their role. They also adopted more sensitive and proactive styles and skills when dealing with their young children.

These benefits were still being sustained two years later.

The parents who took part said that they had become more responsive and were more attuned to their children's emotional needs during challenging times.

"Through the ENRICH research, we have investigated a new approach to service provision, tailored to work with existing family health and social services, and which delivers measurable and tangible benefits to parents and their children in the first two years of life.

"This research further evidences the importance of Government and child and family services adequately investing in universal, high quality, parenting support in order to deliver long-term benefits for families and society at large," commented the research's principal investigator, Prof Sinead McGilloway.

She called on the Government, along with other decision makers, to carefully consider the findings "and ensure that they are used to inform services and policy so that more and more parents can be supported in their children's earliest years".

The researchers said that overall, greater universal early parenting supports are needed.

Furthermore, they noted that research suggests that every €1 invested in prevention and early intervention to support parents and children saves the State €4 in the long term.

The research was funded by the Health Research Board.