2023 – Year in review
With this year coming to a close, it’s a great time for the community sector to look back and celebrate what has been achieved during 2023. December is also a good time to reinforce the importance of self-compassion.
The festive season can be a busy and overwhelming time. It can be a joyous occasion, but also a difficult time for some. The practice of self-compassion emphasises the importance of treating yourself with the same warmth, care and understanding you would give someone you care about.
Self-compassion is a skill that can be learnt, with some great discussion and advice available in our recent webinar Self-compassion in families.
2023 – a busy year!
As always, this year saw us advocate for effective parenting support, with the ultimate goal of helping children thrive by supporting parents.
- We continued to use and refine our PracticeWorks methodology to design and refresh theories of change, practice frameworks and outcomes frameworks for several community sector organisations.
- We engaged in hundreds of training and coaching sessions at a practice, service and program level with community and government partners.
- We created parent support resources for organisations including headspace and Emerging Minds, and supported the delivery of our MyTime national peer support program for parents and carers of children with disabilities.
- We released findings from our Parenting Today in Victoria study covering fathers’ work-life balance, child aggression, and parent help-seeking for child mental health concerns.
- We evaluated a long list of programs, including the Association for Children with Disability’s Teens and Beyond program and CatholicCare Wilcannia-Forbes Friends for Life transition to secondary school program.
- And we undertook cultural adaption and resource development for use of the Me as a Parent Scale in practice.
- We were also proud to launch our Innovate Reconciliation Action Plan and are committed to achieving our reconciliation action plan goals.
- We also played a key role in the design and delivery of PAFRA’s International Congress on Evidence Based Parenting Support.
Scaling up smalltalk
It’s been an exciting year for our smalltalk program with work exploring how the program could benefit more parents across Australia. In addition, the Victorian Government recently re-accredited smalltalk training, recognising it as an important part of the early childhood landscape. You can read more about the scaling-up smalltalk investigation in this article on the OPEN website.
Award-winning work
We were thrilled to see our work having real-world impact with KWY Aboriginal Corporation awarded Outstanding Service for a Non-Government Organisation at the 2023 SA Child Protection Awards. Since 2020, we have partnered with Deakin University and CIRCA in evaluating KWY’s Taikurtirna Tirra-apinthi pilot, which recently became an ongoing program.
ParentingNow webinars
This year we delivered 10 ParentingNow webinar events with a focus on digital health, sleep and eating, covering different ages and stages. If you or the families you work with would like to catch up on any of the webinars run throughout the year, the full recordings are available on the Raising Children Network website.
From all of us at PRC, we wish you a safe and enjoyable holiday period and look forward to working with you in the new year.
Warren Cann
CEO, Parenting Research Centre