In March 2012, the United Kingdom government launched‘CANparent’ for parents and carers of children aged 0-5 years. CANparent provided all parents of such children living in three English districts with the opportunity to access parenting courses from June, 2012 – March, 2014. The aim was that the trial would stimulate the market for universal parenting classes, offering choice to parents, and introducing a market approach to limit costs and stimulate creative development. Although the CANparent initiative lay within the emergent model of universal provision of parenting support education, CANparent possessed significant new features, particularly the marketised elements. The creation of a market in universal parenting support imposes supply and demands side imperatives on actors in the market. The focus of the paper is on the parenting provider organisations’ views of parents and carers, their needs as perceived by the providers, and the providers’ views of parents/carers as a new market. The evidence base for the paper is drawn from 42 interviews undertaken with the lead personnel of the 14 CANparent provider organisations, supplemented by data from standardised measures of parenting need, comparing CANparent (N=174), targeted (N=>2000) and national samples.