Children's Minister Dawn Primarolo has announced three new pilot projects to provide parents and grandparents with information, support and advice including beGrand.net which is a website for grandparents; Parenting On Demand will provide videos online to support parents/carers of children aged 5-19 years; and Relate for Parents, a relationship support service from Relate.

These new services launched in January and will join a range of other telephone helpline and innovative services available to mums, dads, carers and grandparents to ensure that wherever they look for information, they receive coherent advice from respected sources.

Dawn Primarolo said:

“Parent Know How is about pulling together relevant information into one convenient place. Parents, carers and grandparents will now have access to advice and support where and when they need it to help them achieve the best for the children in their care.”

The three new pilots, which will run until March 2011, could reach almost 5 million people. They are:

• beGrand.net - A new web-service to give grandparents a voice, support the development of grandparent communities, increase support for grandparents caring for children, increase contact between grandchildren and grandparents and improve grandparents' parenting skills. See http://begrand.net/
• Parenting On Demand - Aims to develop and syndicate online videos designed to support parents/carers of children aged 5-19.
• Relate for Parents – A new relationship support service from Relate. It will aim to develop online media tools to cater for parents needs by providing advice, support, and guidance to enable them to understand and improve their family relationships, manage conflict and make change happen.