Map your steps - Positive Parenting

Your activity may include some or all steps below, depending on the capacity of the LDAT and partner community organisations.

These steps provide an indicative guide only (it is important to tailor your approach to your local community):

a. Engaging the community

b. Link community organisations to quality positive parenting activities

c. Strengthening existing positive parenting activities

d. Supporting community organisations with communication

Engaging the community

A critical role of an LDAT in facilitating or supporting a positive parenting activity is to engage with their community to put parenting issues on the public agenda and to motivate the community to take action.

Tips for engaging the community:

• Identify community organisations that you may partner with. See Working with community partners
• Identify key contacts within these organisations. Identify one or more people in these organisations who can act as a champion and invest time into your activity. These people may be in leadership roles, have an influential personality, or be a proactive person who is passionate about preventing alcohol and other drug-related harms. For example, key contacts may include local parents, kindergarten teachers and librarians, through to one or more staff employed by local council, or other specialist community support services. (Meet face-to-face if you can rather than relying on email.)
• When discussing positive parenting, promote the benefits to children, parents, families and the broader community. Show potential partners how positive parenting aligns with their core business and values
• Find a hook and answer the question for them: ‘What’s in it for me?’. For example, are they motivated to deliver positive parenting due to their existing organisational charter, to related problems they’re facing (e.g. drug use, poor attendance etc.), or does the impact of these problems impact their existing broader client base?

Useful resources: Community consultation

Linking community organisations to quality Positive Parenting activities

A key role of an LDAT is to link community organisations to quality positive parenting activities, which may include:

• Existing parenting programs, such as Triple P: Positive Parenting Program
• Expert trainers, facilitators and guest speakers, sourced from local networks or peak bodies.

LDATs should not deliver positive parenting activities unless the organisations in their team have the appropriate expertise. In the circumstances that they don’t have the required expertise, the primary role of LDATs should be to support ‘suitably qualified’ community organisations to deliver quality positive parenting activities.

See paragraph Select an evidence-based activity for information about positive parenting activities that have been shown to be effective in Australia.

Strengthening existing Positive Parenting activities

It is likely that a number of positive parenting activities are being delivered locally by community organisations (e.g. many libraries have ‘storytime’ sessions for young children and their parents). Draw on your local knowledge and networks to identify existing activity and consider how your group can work with community organisations to support and strengthen their existing efforts.

Some ways that LDATs can act as a resource for community organisations that are delivering positive parenting activities include:

• Providing community organisations with access to resources and evidence around local needs
• Link groups with local initiatives (e.g. upskilling opportunities for parents) or networks and promote collaboration.

This kind of information can be drawn from the LDATs initial community consultation.

see paragraph Working with community partners in Positive Parenting Toolkit - Planning for further guidance on engaging with community partners.

Useful resources: Working with community partners

Supporting community organisations with communication

Communication around positive parenting is important, and if done poorly, may lead to poor uptake of activities and parent backlash due to parents being misinformed about the purpose, content and outcomes/benefits of the program.

Your group can support community organisations with communication. This may include helping groups to develop promotional materials, promoting activities to parents and providing a sounding board on how to frame and communicate different activities.

Key considerations when communicating positive parenting activities:

• Ensure parents know how to reach out for help by focusing on raising awareness of activities, how the activities can help families and where parents can find them
• Ensure all communication is inclusive. Parenting activities are for all parents, including fathers, grandparents and carers
• Focus on normalising the idea that parenting activities help all parents, not just those with more severe problems
• Be supportive. Avoid language that may be perceived as judgemental
• Focus on the positives. Positive parenting activities deliver benefits for children, parents, families and the broader community.

Measuring success and reporting