Family-centred approach to helping parents

A family-centred approach: what is it?

A family-centred approach is a way of working in partnership with families to better understand their circumstances, and to help parents decide what strategies will best suit their children and families.

A family-centred approach has some basic principles:

Support works best when you understand each family’s individual goals, expectations, values and everyday life.
Parents know their children and their family best.
All families have strengths, and we learn and grow best when we use our strengths.
Children’s wellbeing and development depends on the wellbeing of all other family members and of the family as a whole.
Family wellbeing depends on the quality of informal social supports and the availability of formal support services.

This approach is an effective way to improve outcomes for families and children. And it works across a wide range of human services.

Why a family-centred approach is important for children

Children learn and develop best through everyday play and interactions with parents, carers and families. When you help families build skills, knowledge and confidence for these interactions, you also help to create the best environment for children’s health, development and wellbeing.

Also, parents are experts on their children. With a family-centred approach, you can draw on parents’ expertise and use it to develop the right supports and services for children.

Children are central to a family-centred approach. If you keep children in focus when making decisions about their lives, and you work in partnership with them and their families, you’re safeguarding and promoting their interests, safety and wellbeing.

Using a family-centred approach

You can use a family-centred approach in the way you work with families overall, the way you support children, and the way you support parents. Here are some ideas.

Your work with families

Try to be sensitive and responsive to different kinds of families, including socioeconomically diverse families, culturally and linguistically diverse families, LGBTIQ+ families, blended families and co-parenting families. This might mean offering services that are available in different languages, are free to use and so on.
Base services on what families and children want and need. The best way to learn this is to ask. For example, if a parent says that they want more time with their child, you can suggest services with plenty of parent-child interaction.
Be flexible in how you provide services, thinking about what’s most useful to each individual family. For example, some families might like face-to-face support, and others might prefer online support.
Work with families to build a network of informal or community supports and resources. For example, if you connect new parents with a new parents group, they might need less formal support.
Build your connections with other mainstream and specialist child and family services so you know where to point families.

Your support for children

Work with families to surround children with secure and loving relationships – at home and in the community. You can start with your own respectful relationship with parents. Children will learn from your interactions.
Ensure health, safety and good nutrition for children.
Look out for and respond to children’s cues and clues.
Use the strengths and interests of each child as the foundation for learning. For example, if a child likes to sing, you can teach in songs.
Surround children with language. You can use books, music, storytelling and so on.
Encourage exploration and play.

raisingchildren.net.au has a comprehensive range of articles, videos and other content on children’s relationships, health, safety, nutrition, learning, development, play, sleep and more.

Your support for parents

Be reliable, and follow through with your commitments to parents. For example, if you say you’ll phone or visit at a certain time, make sure you do.
Try not to make assumptions about what parents ‘need to know’. Talk with parents about their goals and the sort of information they’re looking for.
Listen to parents carefully when they ask questions. Acknowledge that parents can feel very anxious when they don’t know something, especially if it relates to their child’s health or wellbeing.
Provide support without judging. For example, instead of saying ‘You shouldn’t yell at Tommy when he doesn’t listen’, you can say ‘I understand that you’re tired and this can make it harder to be patient. Let’s look at how we can help Tommy respond’.
If there’s a crisis, accept and respect parents who are confused or highly emotional. A crisis can happen to anybody. And it might help to give parents a few minutes to calm their thoughts. One way to do this is by offering to get the parent a glass of water.