Supporting parents, healthy children

A Ministry of Health guideline for all mental health and addiction services was released in September 2015.

The guideline – Supporting Parents, Healthy Children – sets expectations and provides recommendations for services engaging with children, family and whānau. It outlines a five-year phased implementation process across organisational, service and practice levels with both essential and best practice elements. For many services this will require a paradigm shift from the individualised approach that is often the focus.

The guideline focusses on strengths, and promotes and protects the wellbeing and rights of children. It promotes:

• early intervention in the lives of children to support resilience
• offering evidenced based and culturally appropriate ways of working
• across sector partnerships to meet the needs of children and their families and whānau.

Download Supporting Parents, Healthy Children from the Ministry of Health website. Te Pou has a limited number of hard copies available of this document, email Angela Gruar to order a copy.

Other resources

• Supporting parents, healthy children micro-site, hosted by the Werry Centre
• The latest newsletter plus a selection of current COPMIA-focussed resources are also available on the Werry Centre's website.
• The children's action plan expert advisory group have released a series of videos for professionals about how to have difficult conversations with parents regarding their alcohol and drug use, mental health, violence, and the impact of these on their children. Read more and watch the videos on the Children's Action Plan website. 
• Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists - Children of parents with mental illness (position statement 56, March 2016) [PDF; 188 KB]