Our experience of developing the Resilient Parent coaching project and the Recovery Coaching peer coach training programme has prompted us to consider developing parent to parent coach training.

 

 

 

 

 

We believe this approach has high potential because:

• Parent to parent coaching will become embedded in the community
• Parents who have been trained will have a range of skills which can help them contribute to community life, support others, and specifically to help other parents. We have already seen the beginnings of this process in our Resilient Parent project
• Peer support is an empowering process for both peers
• Parents’ engagement with, and experience of benefit from professionals can be enhanced if they feel they also have access to a wider range of support which is not ‘gate-kept’, time-limited or dependent on reaching a threshold of need or crisis.  Professionals can then be used for specialist experience and resources, whilst other parents can be used for support, coaching and ongoing back-up.

We are currently seeking funding to develop and pilot parent to parent coaching in the Craigmillar area of Edinburgh.