Children, parents and family challenges
When parents and carers raise their children in warm, responsive and flexible ways, children grow and develop well. And when parents have support and feel accepted and valued in their communities, they can parent effectively and help their children do well.
All parents experience ups and downs as their children grow and develop.Many parents experience extra challenges from time to time. These challenges can make it harder for them to give their children the loving support they need for development.
For example, family challenges might include:
- financial problems or unemployment
- frequent family relocation
- relationship problems, family breakdown andsingle parenting
- illness or disability
- family violence
- alcohol and other drug use
- racism or discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity
- social isolation.
With appropriate information, skills and support,parents can navigate these types of family challenges and their children can thrive, now and in the future.
Support for parents can include practical support, emotional or personal support, and information or advice. For example, it might include help with looking after children, someone to listen and talk things over with, and information from child and family health nurses.
Supporting families experiencing challenges
When you’re looking at ways to support families experiencing challenges, it’s best to take afamily-centred approach. This means tailoring support to individual family circ*mstances and developing support options in partnership with parents and children.
This kind of approach can help you:
- create a safe environment where families learn to trust you
- put families in touch with helpful resources
- give accurate advice and information in a sensitive way
- support families during times of change
- give parents and carers the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to make decisions that suit their own circ*mstances.
Respectful and effective communication is essential to understanding individual family circ*mstances and fostering partnerships.
Reaching families experiencing challenges
Many families have times where they’re under financial, time or social and emotional pressure. This can mean theydon’t have the time, money or opportunities to use services or to use services often.
Sometimes families might not seek help or use services because they feel embarrassed or intimidated, or they think that the service isn’t meant for them.
And sometimes families won’t use services because they worry that people will think they can’t cope.
Here are ways to reach out to these families:
- Ensure your service makes all families feel safe and comfortable. For example, have a staff member available to greet parents and carers, resources that show images of diverse families, and a child-friendly waiting area with books, toys and breastfeeding facilities.
- Check that the physical environment is accessible. For example, have ramps for prams and wheelchairs.
- Be efficient with time. Adjusting your schedule to suit parent availability and being prepared can make it easier for time-pressured families.
- Be flexible in the way you communicate with parents. For example, use the phone, emails, newsletters and online or face-to-face meetings.
- Check that the way you communicate is accessible. For example, are the resources available in the languages that parents in your program can read? Do you have access to interpreters? Do you use ordinary, everyday language rather than professional jargon?
- Help parents feel valued by finding out more about their family. For example, you could ask about the people who regularly care for the family’s children, including people’s names, the names children use for them, their pronouns and so on.
- If parents are separated, look for ways to communicate with both parents, and negotiate this with both parents if you can.
Many families don’t know how or where to get help. You can be a key link between families experiencing challenges and the help they need.
Working with families experiencing challenges
When you’re working with families, it’s important to focus on family strengths and have positive contact with parents and carers, rather than communicating only when there’s a problem. For example, it’s great if you can make a phone call or get in touch when something goes well for the family.
Once you’ve built up good relationships with families, it’s much easier to raise and resolve difficulties.
Afocus on shared goals will help you and parents work together to tackle problems. For example, a shared goal might be keeping a child healthy, well and connected with their community. You might be able to achieve this by helping parents find a playgroup where they feel comfortable. It’s good to let parents know that you feel confident about working together to achieve shared goals.
Asimple problem-solving approach can help you work in partnership with parents too. Here’s how to use this approach:
- Clarify the situation, issue or parents’ concern.
- Ask parents what they’ve already done to solve the issue – what has worked, what hasn’t and what got in the way. This way you’ll get the benefits of parents’ experiences, and parents will feel that you respect and value what they’ve been doing.
- Make a list of all the possible ways of solving the issue. Encourage everyone to come up with ideas. Avoid debating or judging ideas at this stage.
- Together work out the pros and cons of all the solutions you’ve come up with.
- Together decide on the best solution.
- Discuss what parents might need to try out the solution – for example, tip sheets, phone numbers for community agencies or telephone helplines.
- Regularly review progress towards solving the problem. This means making a time to meet, either on the phone, online or in person.
If you can identify and work on problems early, it can prevent more or bigger problems later. For example, when you help parents find a local health care provider who can speak their language, children are likely to get health care when they need it.
Providing accurate and sensitive advice and information
Sometimes you can help families just by giving them accurate information in a sensitive way.
These tips can helpwhen parents ask you for information or advice:
- Reassure parents that it’s OK to seek help.
- Find out about community services and networks so you know where to refer parents. Create a library of up-to-date resources, and make these easily accessible to parents.
- Make sure that any information you offer is accurate.
- Remember that you don’t have to know all the answers. Help where you can, and refer the parent to someone or somewhere else when you can’t.
