Parent & Family Support
Our Parent & Family Support Specialists help you to facilitate the best possible improvements at home, so you and your child feel that positive changes are taking place. No label is needed, the help is just about you and your child.
What is Parent & Family Support?
No baby arrives with a manual specific to their future development, their strengths, or any difficulties they may have. As parents, we are not forewarned of the challenges of parenthood, in the same way that we can never fully appreciate the depth of love we will feel for our child until he or she arrives. A mixture of love, frustration, concern, pride and anxiety can leave us feeling like we are not getting this parenting role right! Literally, all parents feel like this at some time.
Our Parent Support Specialists here to help you navigate some of the challenges of parenting a child with additional needs. The starting premise is that you are the expert on your child. The Parent Support Specialist will build on your existing knowledge and skills, listen to your concerns and draw on evidence-based techniques and strategies that will help to build and maintain the parent-child relationship. This will also help to moderate any difficult behaviours your child demonstrates, bring some routine and surety to family life.
How will it help my child and me?
All behaviours shown by a child are his or her way of telling us how they feel, be it unhappy, anxious, cross, excited, scared, ambivalent, proud – the list is endless. Developing the skills to talk calmly about how he or she is feeling is something we cannot expect a child to do really until the mid-teens or early adulthood. It follows that a child with additional needs has to contend with far more on a daily basis than their ‘typically developed’ siblings or friends. This can lead to frustration and anxiety, often borne out in his or her actions. Home is usually the place a child feels at their safest, so as a parent you may often be on the receiving end of some pretty challenging behaviours.
The Parent Support Specialist will work with you to develop a bespoke range of parenting tools and strategies, that will help you to understand and interpret your child’s behaviour, and act in a way that can deescalate a tricky situation, which will enable your child to regulate their feelings and behaviours. In this way, you will be helped to help your child.
The outcome will be that you feel empowered by your new understanding of your child and confident that you can help your child to make changes that will leave them feeling calmer, happier and more secure. This is a firm foundation to go out into the world exploring with more independence, with you as their co-adventurer and main cheerleader.
Will this be right for me or us?
Just thinking about wanting Parent Support can lead some parents to believe they are not ‘getting it right’. There will be times when the Parent Support Specialist will support you to think about parenting styles from another perspective and it is often through parental change, that the child’s behaviour and relationships change. It is important to ask yourself if you feel ready to make small changes that could make a big difference to your child and family life. If the answer is yes, no matter how cautiously, then this support can be hugely beneficial.
We will always put your child first
The parent-child relationship is so important to family life as well as for a child’s development. At Now, Next & Then we join with parents to work together for the best possible outcomes for children. The Parent Support Specialist is here to support parents while they support their children through some difficult milestones and developmental stages. As an advocate for you and your child, you can be assured of a completely child and family centred approach.
What can I expect?
Our specialists have worked for many years with parents and families using a wide range of evidenced based parenting programmes that have been proven to be effective in different countries and cultures, as well as in the UK. Their approach is to be supportive, encouraging and without a doubt, non-critical. Our specialists have had first hand experience and know parenting is not always easy. They know that you and your child have a set of experiences that are known only to you, so you can be assured of totally individualised support that will dovetail expert advice into your family scenario.
Alongside everyone in the Now, Next & Then team, our specialists bring professional honesty and integrity, while their approach will be nothing short of caring and understanding. We want you to feel empowered to move forward with confidence and new tools so that you can gain the greatest pleasures from parenting, at times which may otherwise make you doubt your capabilities.
Let us reframe your child’s future, today
Now, Next & Then provides the very best collaborative working, with the highest standard of professional integrity, to ensure quality support for everyone.
There are no hidden costs.
Our travel time and expenses are not charged.
Now, Next & Then is exempt from VAT.