Laser Lessons - Lesson

Engage young parents in supporting their children’s development

Table of Contents

In this tutorial you will learn:

How engaging young parents is an important and challenging part of a practitioner's work
The need for practitioners to remember that fathers may need specific encouragement as they often feel left out or ignored
The importance for young mothers and fathers to feel valued to encourage them in supporting their own child's development

Table of Contents

The Anna Freud Centres’ ‘Self-care top-tips for young parents and carers’ booklet offers some simple self-care advice for young parents and carers about the importance of self-care and looking after their own mental health and wellbeing whilst raising children.
Click to read ‘Young parents: learning from case reviews’ from the NSPCC. Published case reviews suggest practitioners don’t always fully understand the experiences and issues that might put young parents and their children at risk. The learning from these case reviews highlights that practitioners should focus on the welfare of all the children in a family, particularly when parents are children themselves. Practitioners should also consider how young parents’ experiences might impact on their children.
Bliss research shows young parents face ‘double whammy’ of being underprepared and under-supported when their babies are in neonatal care.
The Anna Freud Centres’ ‘Self-care top-tips for young parents and carers’ booklet offers some simple self-care advice for young parents and carers about the importance of self-care and looking after their own mental health and wellbeing whilst raising children.
Investigate whether your local authority has its own guidance on supporting teenage or young parents.
Read through this story from Hannah and Kieran on how they dealt with ‘Becoming parents with no warning’ when Hannah was 22.
This document from the Mental Health Foundation is titled ‘Father's Day: a focus on young fathers and mental health’.
The Mental Health Foundation has also produced ‘A young parent guide to loneliness’.
In ‘The next chapter: Young people and parenthood’ from Action for Children the document looks at how being a young parent impacts many areas of their lives including education and training, relationships and wellbeing, and stigma and services.
This document ‘Young fathers: Where we are now’ from Working with Men looks at the engagement of young fathers in their child’s lives.
‘Where can young parents go for support?’ is a section of the Family Lives website.

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