Engaging with parents

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

This course is intended to support practitioners to sensitively engage with parents about their children’s social and emotional wellbeing by strengthening practitioners understanding of factors and circumstances that impact on parents’ family and social relationships and their relational capabilities.

As you work through the course, you will strengthen your understanding of factors and circumstances that impact a child’s social and emotional wellbeing and the role you can play as a practitioner by engaging with and supporting a parent in their parenting role to support a child’s mental health.

You will also have the opportunity to:

• reflect on your own current setting, practice, and what you aim to achieve when you meet with and engage with parents
• focus on what is meant by parent engagement, why it is important in supporting the mental health outcomes for children, and what parents say about engagement
• consider professional and parental factors that may impact on parent engagement
• consider and reflect on your own professional response to complexity in clients or families you are working with to understand the role you can play in early intervention and prevention to support child mental health.

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.

It is estimated that the course will take you 1.5-2 hours (including watching videos and completing assessments). However, you can complete the course in several sessions at your own pace. The last page you visit will be bookmarked so that you can jump straight back to where you left off – whenever it suits you, 24/7.