The pregnancy to parenthood project will focus on supporting Parents with a learning disability as early as possible, to empower families and give them the best chance of staying together.

Rather than working with parents in a reactive way, responding to crisis, we want to support parents to develop and demonstrate positive parenting skills and strategies, reducing he risk of concerns arising that could lead to child protection procedures and interventions.

Clear pathways of support will be provided from pregnancy up to when their child/children are five years old. Most of the parents we have supported have common themes in their lives which include poor housing conditions, poverty, vulnerability in the community and sometimes anti-social behaviour.

Many of our parents talk about feeling isolated or lonely or can become dependent on inappropriate people, as they are unable to recognise potentially abusive situations.

We all know that all these factors can be detrimental to family life and to children’s wellbeing. This project will work holistically with parents, addressing all issues of concern s that families have the best possible start in life.

We will do this by offering

• 1 – 1 advocacy support to parents with children under 5 or women who are pregnant. Through 1-1 support we hope to increase access to parenting support and community services. We will also support families in a holistic way and ensure all aspects of family life are addressed eg housing, health and income.
• Access to fortnightly peer support group to help reduce isolation
• Facilitation of Mellow parenting workshops to increase the use of effective parenting strategies and increased understanding of their children’s needs.
• Facilitation of Freedom Programme to increase understanding of domestic violence and the impact on the children.
• Access to self advocacy workshops to increase self esteem and confidence.
• Accessible recipes and information
• Signposting to other services
• Referrals to other local services
• Form filling
• Support to make phone calls
• Emotional support
• Access to Parents Facebook group