Our Approach
Our courses run within small, friendly groups, guided and supported by a parent facilitator. This enables parents to explore issues that are important to them in a safe and supportive environment. Our courses nurture the group to 'do the work' themselves, so that change is a personally generated process, rather than something parents feel has been imposed upon them.
Courses generally run as a series of weekly sessions of approximately 2 hours.
Parents are guided through a series of exercises and activities which are designed to examine parent's individual experiences of parenting and being parented. Our facilitators appreciate the strong feelings and recollections this process can stimulate. They are trained to support groups in appropriately sharing and exploring these experiences, learning from each other in a focused and non-threatening way. We recognise every parent is different, so we are able to adapt our courses to reflect individual needs, such as literacy, language or support issues.
Parents are encouraged to recognise and celebrate their existing skills and explore new strategies for the future. Groups work together to explore fresh approaches and support each other in make changes which feel meaningful to them. Experiential learning is reinforced with 'take home' tasks which consolidate learning between sessions and are reported back to the group.
In a relaxed and friendly atmosphere parents can...
- Discuss how they are getting on
- Practise some different ways of communicating with their children
- Learn about how to balance their own and their children's needs
On completion of the course, parents are offered membership of Parent Network Scotland, so that they can receive newsletters, access online resources and keep in touch with other parents.
Testimonials
We have been running these courses for 14 years so we feel confident, from the feedback we've had from parents, that we have a valuable learning resource which works.
"The course actually helped my kids to find their own solutions to problems"
"Parent Network gave me some clues which literally saved a failing family situation"
