Voluntary parenting support

We know the challenges that parents can face when trying to provide the care and support that their children need. This is even more vital if your child has become involved in negative and possible criminal behaviours.

Often, parents themselves are trying to parent in difficult conditions. These may include:

• Dealing with poor or overcrowded living conditions
• Struggling to manage relationships with others within the family (including your child)
• Issues with emotional well-being. This includes dealing with past trauma
• A reliance on substances or other addictive acts to cope. This includes alcohol, legal and illegal drugs, gambling and risk taking behaviours.

In addition, it might be that our help could provide you with new ideas to make your parenting more effective.

If you have a child currently being supported by our service and any of the above issues feel relevant - we can help you!

Our expert parenting practitioners, based within the service, can work with you on a voluntary basis to understand the difficulties that your child faces. We can build your skills and help you to understand how your own experiences affect your relationship with your child. We can help you to engage with the key services involved in your child’s life.

How to get support

• If your child’s case manager found issues in their assessment, they may talk to you about gaining support from our parenting practitioners. This would be part of the overall service offer.
• You can pro-actively talk to the case manager about gaining support.

In both cases, a parenting practitioner will visit you and work with you to make a plan of support. This will include (if needed), working with you to get you in a more stable place. This will help you to be more resilient and then work to develop the plans and skills required.

Work can be direct work with the parenting worker, a process of mediation within the family or as part of a group offer.

ACEs toolkit group programme

This group-based programme aims to help parents understand adverse childhood experiences. It explains how our brains and bodies learn to cope with trauma.

The focus of the sessions is to help you:

• build your resilience and self-esteem
• grow your relationship with yourself and with your child. It will take place in a relaxed and positive environment.

We'll focus on giving you the practical skills you need to look after yourselves. It will also support your child to manage emotions and make action plans for the future.

Sometimes, our service offers parenting support to parent(s) who do not wish to take it up. In this instance, and if a child is again before the court, these parents may be made subject to a Parenting Order.

Parenting orders

If your child repeatedly gets into trouble with the police, is convicted of an offence, or doesn't attend school regularly, the court can hold you responsible.

We normally recommend a Parenting Order which is then issued by court. We only recommend a Parenting Order where parents haven't taken up offers of support and we are concerned about your child. We'll base this on how well they're doing and whether you're acting effectively as parents to try and support your child.

The court can add other conditions to the order, which last for up to 12 months. This can include making sure that your child goes to school.

What happens if you breach a parenting order?

If you breach or fail to comply with a Parenting Order we'll liaise with the Police and arrange for you to be put before the court. The court may impose a number of penalties. These can include fines, community orders or absolute or conditional discharges.

Getting a Parenting Order doesn’t mean that you get a criminal record. It does mean that you can be taken to court if you don’t comply with the order. You can be fined or given a community penalty, which is a sentence that's served in the community.

Additional information