My name is Isabell Sutherland and I took up the new post of parenting coordinator for the Wirral at the end of October last year. The purpose of the role is to work with Health, Local Authority and Third Sector Organisations to ensure families have access to parenting courses/ parenting support as early as possible to avoid problems escalating. In the current economic climate, this is not going to be an easy task I suspect! Although there is no funding attached to my role, from attending a variety of meetings and speaking to quite a number of people across all the sectors, I know that there is a great willingness to change the way we are working with families, mainly by developing a much more coordinated approach with better communication between agencies and across sectors, including joint commissioning. So I am hopeful that we will manage to set up a great offer of support for local families.
As a starting point, I am trying to find out who is delivering parenting support on the Wirral and whilst I have managed to speak to a few organisations, I am sure there will be more of you delivering either parenting programmes or 1-1 support. I would be very grateful if anyone who is providing parenting support would get in touch with me so I can get together a full picture of what is available and identify gaps.
I look forward to hearing from you.
