While the importance of professional support following very preterm delivery (VP) is established, the parental experience of support still warrants deeper understanding. Evaluation of a Dutch one-year post-discharge responsive parenting intervention following VP suggested that parents with lower educational levels benefitted less from the program. This idiographic phenomenological study investigated the lived experiences of two mothers with differing educational backgrounds receiving professional support during hospitalization and post-discharge. In-depth interviews with the mothers were analyzed using Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. We formulate three impressions: (1) How the mothers made sense of their experiences resonated with the findings of research on class differences in parenting. (2) The mothers valued professionals who struck a personalized balance between supporting their maternal agency and attending to their vulnerability and needs for help and perspective. (3) The mothers experienced greater trust in professionals who could suspend pre- conceived assumptions and take their personal characteristics into consideration. Practice suggestions are extrapolated for social work professionals. The study has relevance to educational diversity and recommends an overarching sensitivity to positionality in professional work with parents.
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Always a complex and demanding task, parenthood can be an extra challenge when parents have severe mental illness. Clients with children may experience extra stress, feelings of uncertainty, and a lack of energy. They may have difficulty in talking about their disabilities with their children. Often, there are struggles with limited material resources and stigma or grief over the loss of having direct custody of their children. In all these situations, clients need support in interacting and communicating with their children in ways that benefit both parties. However, although there is a growing awareness of the needs of these clients and of parental responsibility for the children involved, the parental role is seldom a topic in mental health care. Within the field of rehabilitation, although there is considerable professional literature on skills training and experience in helping clients to realize personal goals in the areas of work, education, living arrangements, and social contacts, there are few or no tools to support clients who wish to strengthen their parenting skills.
Abstract Although parental involvement is often a priority on the quality agenda of schools for primary and secondary education, it is still not usual to involve parents as an educational partner in the actual learning process of their child. Rather than adopting an open approach, teachers tend to tell parents what they should do or keep them at a safe distance. At the same time, parents are increasingly becoming better informed, more critical and thus are more strongly positioned towards school. They address teachers more directly in case of problems or disappointing results of their child. Clearly, this might lead to a negative impact on the mutual relationship especially when parents’ emotional involvement conflicts with a professional and detached attitude of teachers. Based on the results of several studies that provide ample evidence that parental involvement in the learning process can improve learning outcomes, it is argued that there is much to be gained in forming educational partnerships between parents and schools. Different dimensions of active parenting are discussed, as well as prerequisites for successful implementation
Kinderfysiotherapeuten begeleiden baby's waarbij er zorgen zijn over de motorische ontwikkeling. Een goed ontwikkelde motoriek is belangrijk voor o.a. de cognitieve en de taalontwikkeling, en maakt het gemakkelijker om een fysiek actieve leefstijl te ontwikkelen die voorwaardelijk is voor een lang gezond leven. Interventies van kinderfysiotherapeuten bij baby’s met een bewegingsprobleem richten zich op het ondersteunen van ouders in een gelijkwaardige samenwerking. Kinderfysiotherapeuten zien daarbij een diversiteit in ideeën en overtuigingen die ouders hebben over ontwikkeling. Deze ideeën en overtuigingen, ook wel Parental Beliefs genoemd, vormen de basis van hun doen en laten in het zorgen voor hun baby (Parental Practices). Om een interventie goed te laten aansluiten bij het gezin, is het belangrijk dat kinderfysiotherapeuten zicht hebben op de Parental Beliefs. Kinderfysiotherapeuten ervaren echter belemmeringen om dit uit te vragen en werken hierin nu vaak intuïtief, omdat goede instrumenten ontbreken. In het project PEBBLES (ParEntal Beliefs concerning their Baby, Lifestyle and Experience Study) staat daarom de volgende onderzoeksvraag centraal: Hoe kunnen we samen met ouders en kinderfysiotherapeuten tools voor het in kaart brengen van Parental Beliefs & Practices ten aanzien van de motorische ontwikkeling van kinderen van 0-2 jaar ontwikkelen, die ingezet kunnen worden in de kinderfysiotherapeutische beroepspraktijk en in interventiestudies? In het PEBBLES-project ontwerpen we een toolbox om kinderfysiotherapeuten te ondersteunen bij het in kaart brengen van het denken en doen van ouders. In een iteratief proces ontwikkelen we dit samen met co-designers, Living Labs van zes MKB-kinderfysiotherapiepraktijken, ouders en onderzoekers. Een co-design-aanpak met aandacht voor de menselijke waarden borgt dat er tijdens het ontwerpproces voldoende aandacht is voor de impact van deze innovaties op de ouders en kinderfysiotherapeuten. Ook doen kinderfysiotherapeuten ervaring op met ontwerpprocessen en ontwikkelen daarbij ontwerpend vermogen.
Bullying at school is an emotionally charged topic that significantly tests the relationship between parents and teachers. It is a sensitive issue as it directly relates to the child's upbringing at home. Furthermore, parents and teachers have differing perspectives on the child, and the strategies they adopt to curb bullying are based on different perspectives and spheres of influence. In recent years, a variety of measures have been implemented in order to combat bullying at primary schools. Many different anti-bullying programmes have been developed for schools and a wide range of methods, training courses and tools are available to help teachers work together with parents in order to optimise their child's educational development. However, all of these anti-bullying methods lack concrete advice and tools to help teachers work together with parents whose children are personally involved in an incidence of bullying, despite experts across the board agreeing that cooperation between parents and teachers is of vital importance.The goal of this project is to develop an effective strategy to facilitate cooperation between parents and teachers that can be employed in the event of bullying as a supplement to existing anti-bullying programmes. This consortium's ambition is to boost the social safety of children in primary education by applying expertise in the field of bullying and parental involvement, and by combining past experiences.
