Therapeutic parenting groups

Lane Cove Parenting Support Groups
Aim:
To help women manage anxieties which arise during pregnancy and early parenting and to alleviate, as much as possible, the impact of these anxieties on the parent infant relationship

Strategies:

• Mobilise mothers’ inner and outer resources to help them through the earlyparenting time
• Allow for debriefing of labour
• Facilitate formal and informal contact with other mothers
• Facilitate referral when necessary
• Facilitate contact with relevant community resources
• Normalise and contain the mothers’ anxiety
• Make links between mothers’ own experiences as babies and
  those of their babies
• Discuss expectations around parenting
• Alleviate negative projections onto baby
• Discuss expectations of baby and how parents can assist the meeting of normal developmental challenges

Parenting Groups for Women in Gaol

PIFA has developed a partnership with the Department of Corrective Services to set up a program which will support them in their parenting while in prison and then facilitate support for them and their families when they leave the prison system.
PIFA consultants are piloting a therapeutic parenting group, for mothers at Emu Planes Prison’s Jacaranda House. The aim of these groups is to help women manage the anxieties which arise during motherhood and to alleviate, as much as possible, the impact of these anxieties on the parent-infant relationship.
The group will provide a safe place for the women to
think about how their cultural and individual experiences might impact on their ability to care for their child, and
come to terms with past traumas and manage the effects of them, so that they are less likely to be re-enacted in their relationship with their child.
Aims
• To support women to manage the transition to parenting particularly in the context of being in Gaol through the provision of therapeutic parenting groups
• Assist mothers in gaol to increase their sensitivity and emotional responsiveness to their child
• Support mothers in gaol to overcome negative patterns of child rearing and replace them with parenting strategies that are both rewarding for parents and beneficial to their child’s development

Objectives

• Mobilise mothers’ inner and outer resources to help them through early parenting
• Normalise and contain the mothers’ anxiety
• Support mothers to think about their baby as individuals
• Make links between mothers’ own childhood experiences and their relationship with their babies
• Discuss expectations around parenting
• Debrief the experience of labour
• Discuss expectations of baby and how parents can assist their child to meet normal developmental challenges

Outcomes for parents are:

• Greater confidence to deal with their new child
• Decrease in parental anxiety, depression and stress
• Smoother transitions into mothering in the community