Who are our Facilitators?
All Parent Network Scotland's courses are delivered by specially trained parent facilitators. Our facilitator's are parents or carers who have initially completed our core course, Parenting Matters, and gained something useful from the experience. Those who have shown potential as facilitators or expressed an interest are then either offered further development opportunities or invited to apply for facilitator assessment. Not everyone is accepted first time round - the work we do is too important for compromise. However, everyone is given constructive feedback and offered opportunities for further development and training where appropriate.
We are looking for exceptional people, those who have shown existing ability or strong potential in listening skills, group working, facilitating and supporting others through personal change. In addition, we expect all our facilitators to display an empathetic, non-judgemental approach towards parents coupled with the ability to appropriately challenge and maintain personal and group boundaries in what can sometimes be demanding circumstances. Facilitators are expected to develop professional relationships across multiple agencies and disciplines, keep appropriate records, participate in monitoring and evaluation of courses and undertake appropriate support and supervision. Perhaps above anything else, we expect our facilitators to be reflective practitioners, solid professional and passionate about the work we do.
If it sounds like we are asking for the world, you are right! We recognise that we ask a lot of our facilitators, but rightly so. Many of the parents we work with are in a difficult place: exhausted, frustrated, angry, and sometimes hopeless. Others are less 'wrung out', but beginning to worry they are failing their children; scared, confused and struggling to find a way forward. It takes exceptional people to support these parents through embarrassment, suspicion and defensiveness towards relaxing, trusting the group and opening up to new ideas. For some parents, the route to accessing a parenting course has been painful, frightening, even humiliating. It takes someone special to support these parents in engaging and moving forward within the group setting. So, yes, we do expect a lot of our facilitators - but we believe it's what these parents deserve.
Parenting for All - Development Award
About the Award
The Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) certificates the participants who undertake the Parenting4All programme, thereby providing them with the benefit of recognition from a leading national professional and awarding body. The 4 day programme is an ILM Development Award, which enables organisations to gain external validation and recognition for programmes which have been specially designed to support particular organisational and sectoral needs and tailored to their own ways of working. ILM Development Awards do not have an assessment component.
The Social Enterprise Academy is an ILM Centre. ILM is a professional body with a world wide network of over 2000 accredited centres providing flexible and practical leadership and development programmes which are quality assured to the ILM's standards. Through the Academy, you will be registered for the Parenting4All Development Award. As the course goes on, we will track your attendance and progress, and ultimately confirm with ILM that you have undergone the training and learning required for the Award. You will then receive your certificate from ILM to prove that you have undertaken and completed the Award.
Course aims
Through the Parenting4All programme and Development Award, Parent Network Scotland will help and support participants in:
- Building confidence when facilitating or working with parents
- Linking needs, feelings and behaviours
- Recognising and accepting the emotional content and context when working with parents
- Involving parents and families in leadership, decision-making and change through learning
How the course will be delivered
Parenting4All has been designed with two types of participant in mind:
- parents who wish to develop their facilitation skills in order to go on to deliver Parenting Matters courses and set up parent support groups on behalf of Parent Network Scotland, and
- professionals who want to develop their skills, competencies and expertise when working with parents, either in group settings or on a one-to-one basis.
All of the course content and the material contained in this manual is relevant to both parents and professionals, but some written material may have a stronger natural focus for one group. There may occasionally be a reference to the Parenting Matters course which is delivered in Scotland by parent facilitators on behalf on PNS. We have deliberately kept the manual the same for both parents and professionals, as we believe that the facilitation skills, empathy and understanding about yourself and others gained from the course are universal.
The course covers four days, and usually these days will be delivered in a 1-2-1 format. Although we can be flexible in this approach. This allows time between sessions for participants to use some of the tools and reflect on their own responses to what they hear and how this will affect their practice. With day 1 acting as a good introduction to the skills you need to work with parents positively and getting to know the group better, having days 2&3 running together lets us build up a bit of momentum and confidence. Day 4 gives us more chances to come back and share experiences of using our new skills and planning the way ahead for the future. You will have some assignments of reading to complete between the course days, but this is explained in each section and will build on your learning experience overall.
parenting4All is a participative programme - you will need to be prepared to share a bit of yourself to make sure that you get the best out of this approach to learning. The course trainers will help you to understand your own learning needs and styles so that you can take part fully in the process.
Each 'day' of the course has its own section in this manual, with a plan/outline for the day, the materials you will need, and other background reading or information you may find helpful. This manual is designed to be used alongside the facilitated Parenting4All course, and should help you in your journey to becoming a better facilitator when working with parents.
Endorsed Award
It is a pre-requisite for this Endorsed Award that you have gained the Parenting for All Development Award.
In order to successfully complete this programme and gain the Endorsed Award you will need to be able to demonstrate that you can put what you have learned for the Development Award into practice as a facilitator of programmes in your own organisation. You will need to demonstrate that you can:
- Confidently facilitate and manage peer learning
- Facilitate learning which links needs, feelings and behaviours
- Recognise accept and work with the emotional content and context of learners
- Involve peer learners in leadership, decision-making and change through learning
This Guide takes you through the process and the requirements of the programme which will enable you to complete successfully and gain your Award.
Facilitation Practice
The main activity of this programme is your own developing practice as a facilitator for your particular organisation. You are expected to spend a minimum of 36 hours facilitating learning while being observed and coached by your mentor over 2 courses. You will need to become thoroughly acquainted with the learning materials that you are going to deliver and the best way to start will usually be to observe experienced facilitators delivering the programme.
Continuous Development
Coaching & Mentoring
When you start on the Endorsed Award, you will be assigned a mentor. The mentor will be an experienced practitioner and peer learning facilitator in your organisation. Your mentor will work with you on your plan for observing and facilitating sessions. You will have 24 hours of a mixture of one to one coaching/mentoring/observation from your mentor over 2 courses. This is an opportunity for you to explore and resolve your issues as you develop your confidence and skills as a facilitator. Your mentor will also observe you facilitating, give you constructive feedback and be part of the final assessment process. The coaching and mentoring is not only an essential part of your own supported development as a facilitator, it is also an important part of your own experience of practitioner-led learning exchange.
At the end of the programme your readiness to be approved as a facilitator of learning exchange is assessed at a final presentation. You are advised not to put yourself forward for this assessment until you are confident, through your own self-assessment, that you are ready.
The purpose of this task is for you to demonstrate your competence as a facilitator of practitioner-led learning exchange through a reflective self-evaluation of your own performance in delivering the programmes in your organisation.
Our facilitators are based throughout Scotland from Inverness to the Borders and represent a broad cross-section of the parents who attend our courses. While many currently work within the public and private sectors, an equal number are parents from out with these sectors who wish to support other parents in making positive changes in their family relationships.
We believe that...
- The 'perfect parent' simply doesn't exist, but that all of us can make simple changes to encourage positive experiences for both our children and ourselves.
- Every parent deserves respect, empathy and support to make positive changes in their family relationships. We accept that life is a journey upon which we learn and grow as individuals and as parents. Part of this development can mean accepting difficult experiences or recognising that we would wish to do certain things differently in the future. We believe the point of power is always in the present and that all of us have the ability to change.
- Parents learn best in supportive, friendly and non-threatening environments. By delivering our courses through parent facilitators as opposed to 'experts' or 'teachers', we have found that the courses are more acceptable to those parent who might otherwise struggle in an authoritative or more prescriptive environment. Facilitator's personal experiences of the core Parenting Matters course and of parenting (and being parented) themselves gives them invaluable insight into both the 'group experience' and the realities of parenting. Where we offer courses focusing on specific issues such as supporting children through change and loss, teenagers or ADHD, facilitators are typically matched in accordance with personal experience.
- That parents are the experts in raising their own children. In helping parents recognise and value their existing skills, we believe parent are best prepared to make sustainable change. We do not blame, we do not 'tell people what to do' and we do not try to show parents one 'correct' way to parent. What we do is offer new strategies and options which help parents explore fresh alternatives to existing parenting patterns. We believe this is the most effective way for parents to explore issues and make sustainable changes that are meaning full to them.
- That we are all doing the best we can... but that sometimes, our best isn't safe enough for either ourselves as parents or for our children. We believe in responding to those experiences honestly, responsibly and with sensitivity.
To register your interest in our Facilitator Training, please complete our Contact Us form and tick the "Facilitator Training" box.
