Parenting Support

Families will require support when faced with problems they are unable to overcome on their own. Ideally support should come from existing networks, such as extended family, religious leaders, and neighbours. Where such support is not available or sufficient, additional family and community services are required. Such services are particularly important for kinship, foster and adoptive caretakers, and child headed households in order to prevent separation and address abuse and exploitation of children. It is also vital for children affected by HIV/AIDS and armed conflict, and those children living on the street.

Parenting support services are typically provided by social and community paraprofessionals. They focus on the individual needs of a child or family, in order to address and overcome issues which may lead to family separation or harm to the child. Such services should be provided within the context of case planning, beginning with an assessment of the child and family situation. By assessing the need first, an appropriate set of services can be offered, such as day care provision, parenting support, household economic strengthening, or psychosocial referral.

Day care services are particularly important for caretakers who are overwhelmed as a result of ill health, cannot provide adaquate care because they need to work, or who are isolated within the community. It provides an excellent opportunity for children to socialise with others, and can offer additional protection and education.

Parenting support provides caretakers with an opportunity to talk about their difficulties, and learn additional techniques for meeting their child’s developmental and relationship needs. It can enable caretakers to cope with behavioural problems, and address abusive parenting techniques, thereby reducing the need for family separation and improving the incidence of successful family reunification.

The literature in this section contains information on family support programmes for vulnerable children, including day care and parenting support.

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Helping Parents Navigate the Child Welfare System: Partnering with CASA to Create Self-Advocacy Resource Kits

Amanda Warnock - Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement, 2019

The goal of this paper is to describe a pilot effort to provide empirically sound self-advocacy resource kits to parents in the child welfare system in one Indiana county in the United States, in partnership with the organization that aims to advocate for the best interests of children at the center of these cases—Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA).

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work, 1st Edition

Edited by Stephen A. Webb, 2019

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Social Work brings together the world’s leading scholars in the field to provide a cutting-edge overview of classic and current research and future trends in the subject.

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Is Family Group Conferencing a Culturally Adequate Method outside the Origin of New Zealand? A Systematic Review

Reidunn Håøy Nygård, Merete Saus - Social Work and Social Sciences Review, 2019

Through systematic and strategic searches, the authors explored the existing trends of Family Group Conference (FGC) research in indigenous contexts.

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Protective Factors Action Sheets

The Center for the Study of Social Policy, 2019

This packet includes the research brief about each protective factor as well as an “action sheet” for service providers about their role in supporting families to build each protective factor.

Module 2 of the Parenting without Violence Bronze Course: How Parenting without Violence Works

Save the Children, 2019

This module is the second part of the Parenting without Violence Bronze Course. It focuses on the course's second learning outcome by sharing more about HOW Parenting without Violence works.

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Adapting a Parenting Program to Support Family Reintegration

Coordinating Comprehensive Care for Children (4Children), 2019

This Practitioner Brief presents key learning and recommendations from the Keeping Children in Healthy and Protective Families (KCHPF) project, an operational research project which supported the reintegration of children living in residential care back into family care in Uganda.

ការសិក្សាស្តីពីការអនុវត្តល្អក្នុងការរៀបចំកម្មវិធីការថែរក្សាកុមារក្នុងគ្រួសារ និងការបង្ការ ការបំបែកកុមារពីគ្រួសារក្នុងប្រទេសកម្ពុជា

Kirsten Anderson - Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC), 2019

This report (in Khmer) provides in-depth analysis of programs of 7 different NGOs in Cambodia working on the prevention of family separation and family preservation in order to respond to risks related to physical and mental well-being and domestic violence.

Identifying effective interventions for promoting parent engagement and family reunification for children in out-of-home care: A series of meta-analyses

Christine Maltais, Chantal Cyr, Geneviève Parent, Katherine Pascuzzo - Child Abuse & Neglect, 19 Dec 2018

The aim of this meta-analysis is to identify the most effective interventions to promote parental engagement and family reunification in high-income countries.

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Social Support and Relationships with Family and Friends

Susan M. Love and Theresa Knott - Handbook of Parenting and Child Development Across the Lifespan , 07 Dec 2018

This chapter from the Handbook of Parenting and Child Development Across the Lifespan explores five domains of research connecting social support and parenting: (1) intergenerational transmission of parenting; (2) community and neighborhood; (3) marriage quality; (4) grandmothers; and (5) offline and online friends.

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Improving psychosocial services for vulnerable families with young children: strengthening links between health and social services in Germany

Ilona Renner, Victoria Saint, Anna Neumann, Daria Ukhova, Sabine Horstmann, Ullrich Boettinger, Martina Dreibus, Astrid Kerl-Wienecke, Pilar Wulff, Paul Mechthild, Heidrun Thaiss - BMJ, 07 Dec 2018

This article from BMJ describes cross-sectoral collaborative efforts in Germany to enhance the skills of parents to care for young children.