Family Support

A major function of Gamesley Early Excellence Centre is to offer support to parents and carers in bringing up their children. Bringing up children is enjoyable and rewarding but it is not always easy. All children can be challenging at times and some may have problems with bedtime routines, eating, toilet training, behaviour etc. Just normal day to day ups and downs of life may be stressful to some parents while others may experience particular problems which make it hard to cope.

We offer help and support in a number of ways:

• Home-visiting/outreach work:

• some matters are best addressed in the home so we sometimes work with individual parents on planned programmes of intervention

• Counselling:

• staff listen to and support parents in finding solutions to their problems. If more specialist help is needed we can refer to the appropriate agencies

• Parent and child support groups:

• many parents benefit from the peer support they get from other parents who may be experiencing similar problems. We run several groups where staff facilitate and encourage the exchange of advice and ideas

• Parenting courses:

• structured parenting courses allow parents to explore a wide range of issues around effective parenting and to develop the skills and confidence they need

• Advice and information:

• staff are able to help and support parents in all aspects of childcare including child development, managing children's behaviour and establishing routines

• Respite care:

• many of the difficulties experienced by parents can be helped by providing a break from the responsibilities of parenting. We are able to offer that regular respite to parents which helps them keep going. We are also able to offer care for children when parents have important appointments or for reasons of sickness or family crisis

• Trips:

• we also go on family trips as often as we are able, we have a people carrier and a minibus which we use to the maximum

• Supervised contact sessions:

• the staff undertake supervised contact for parents who have become separated from their children for a variety of reasons. These may be due to child protection procedures, criminal procedures, family reasons etc.

• Provision for schoolgirl mothers:

• we provide education for schoolgirl mothers with tutors provided by the education service. The courses available are usually GCSE maths and English and NVQ 2 in childcare

• Early Start programmes:

• we run courses for parents with under 3s to increase parents self-confidence and skill base through involvement in their own children's learning. Each course runs for ten weeks and comprises of time for the children/adults to each work in their peer groups, time for parents and child to work together and learning projects to complete at home.