Be a Partner
We invite you to join this collaborative.
As parents, the way we parent is determined by our early experiences as children.
We know that 67% of parents experienced adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) as a child. ACEs are the “not ok” events that sometimes happen in our lives as children. They can be things like emotional, physical, and sexual abuse, bullying, poverty, parental divorce or a parent in jail or with mental health issues.
The science is now clear. The experience of adversity as children causes illness, addiction, and high-risk behaviours in later life. And growing up is also harder with children struggling to make friends, or having difficult behaviours or falling behind in school. And the chances are that we are more likely to create adverse experiences for our children despite our best efforts.
Research in the US is compelling, and now we know the science we can act as parents and prevent the spread of adversity to our children. We can break the cycle to give our children the lives they deserve as adults.
As parents instead of asking ourselves “what is wrong with me?” we can now ask “what happened to me?” Once we make that shift, we can make the first step to healing and to breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma.
The science shows that ACEs lead to a higher risk of:
As well as health we now know that ACEs can negatively impact education, employment, and income.
The good news is that we can act to prevent the impact of ACEs on our health and on our children’s future health, education, employment, and income prospects.
Thriving Together is a local program designed specifically to support parents address the impact of their own ACEs and break the vicious cycle to prevent ACEs occurring in their children’s lives.
Parent Café
The Parent Café process was developed by parent leaders from "Strengthening Families" to design a parent-to-parent way to bring the Protective Factors to families.
The Strengthening Families™ Protective Factors are:
Parent Cafés are physically and emotionally safe spaces where parents and caregivers talk about the challenges and victories of raising a family.
If you are interested in joining a Parent Café please connect with us.
Links to a set of useful resources below: