Engaging parents learning pathway

Engaging with parents about children’s mental health

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The Engaging with parents course introduces you to ways that you can actively and effectively engage with parents about their children’s social and emotional wellbeing.

The course is for practitioners working in services focused on infants and children and services focused on parents and guardians in the health and welfare sectors.

It is particularly designed for those employed in service settings where:

• parenting is not a routine focus of support or treatment (i.e. an adult-focused service)
• active partnership with parents and children’s mental health are not a routine focus of support or treatment (i.e. a child-focused service)
• clients are parents in Parenting Support programs.

Intergenerational mental health

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This course is designed for professionals who work with children, and those who work with adults who are parents. It supports you to apply three elements of an ‘intergenerational lens’ to your work, to positively influence the parent–child relationship and children’s mental health. The course describes how an intergenerational lens can be used in practice to better understand the history of family challenges or disadvantages, as well as the history of family strengths, resilience and know-how.

Child aware practice

Child aware practice covers a range of activities designed to ensure that children of adults with multiple and complex needs receive appropriate support from the services that are working with their parents and carers. It ensures that families are supported to make, and sustain, changes so that they can better meet the needs of the children.

This course focuses on child aware practice as a means to introduce or reinforce child and family-sensitive practice.

Supporting parents to promote children’s social and emotional wellbeing

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This course explores entry points and opportunities for conversations between practitioners and parents which support children’s social and emotional wellbeing. It specifically focuses on conversations which offer support, reassurance, guidance, information, or resources to assist parents in promoting positive mental health in their child.

Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future: Working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander families

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This course has been developed by Emerging Minds in partnership with Healing the Past by Nurturing the Future, a project under Onemda, the Aboriginal and Torres strait Islander Health, Wellbeing, Equity and Healing unit, within the University of Melbourne.

This participatory co-design project, funded by the National Health and Medical Research Council and the Lowitja Institute, is led by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander practitioners and researchers from the University of Melbourne, La Trobe University, Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Southern Cross University, South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute, We Al-li Pty Ltd, Monash University, Flinders University, the Aboriginal Medical Service Alliance Northern Territory, Nunkuwarrin Yunti of South Australia, Orygen, VACCHO, Congress, Women and Children Health Network SA, Charles Darwin University, and Moorondi Aboriginal Community Controlled Health service, in collaboration with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

Let’s talk about children (Let’s Talk)

Let’s Talk About Children (Let’s Talk) is a brief, evidence-based method that trains professionals to have a structured discussion with parents who experience mental illness about parenting and their child’s needs.

It aims to make this conversation a routine part of the alliance between parents and professionals where they can explore the wellbeing and development of children and how their parent’s mental illness is understood by them.