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Supporting parents in residential and inpatient mental health settings

For some practitioners working in adult-only residential and inpatient mental health programs, starting conversations about parenting, and working with parents and their children might be new and challenging.

The Keeping in Touch with Your Children (KIT) Menu has been designed to provide practical ways you can promote parent-child connectedness during periods of separation.

The Keeping in Touch Menu includes :

There is also a suite of Keeping in Touch tools for alcohol and other drugs treatment settings.

These tools can help you implement Keeping in Touch in your workplace and support the mental health of parents and their dependent children.

Helping parents and children stay connected is part of the recovery process and important for children’s ongoing mental health and wellbeing.

Why is keeping in touch important?

  • We know the circumstances of parents can impact on the immediate emotional and social wellbeing, and future mental health outcomes, of children.
  • We also know that the roles of parenting and relationships are important for people living with mental illness or mental health problems.
  • We understand that adult-focused health services can find it challenging to incorporate parenting and child and family needs into their scope of practice and service delivery.

Mental health practitioners in inpatient or residential settings are well placed to support parents to remain in contact with their dependent children during a period of separation, whilst helping parents to build their self-efficacy as a parent.

The Keeping in Touch Menu and supporting resources are a trauma-informed, relational recovery approach that support practitioners to implement child-focused practice and bring children into the parents’ recovery journey. The resources aim to reduce the trauma of separation, reduce the stigma of parental mental illness, and promote family resilience and wellbeing.

Introducing the Keeping in Touch Menu poster

The Keeping in Touch Menu expands the idea of connection beyond visits and in-person contact, which is not always possible for parents in mental health inpatient or residential programs.

Instead, Keeping in Touch offers a menu of contact choices, that you can work through with parents to decide what is best at a given time.

The Keeping in Touch Menu poster displays the range of connection choices for parents in mental health inpatient or residential programs. The poster comes in two versions, one for each setting.

It is a visual invitation to parents to talk to staff about their dependent children and provides ideas about how they can continue to connect with them while they are apart. It is also a reminder for staff, providing prompts to start child-centred conversations with consumers who are parents.

It is designed to be displayed permanently in public, high traffic spaces around the centre. This shows parents that staff value the parent-child relationship and are ready to have non-judgemental and helpful conversations about parent-child contact during the stay.

Read below for further information on the contact options per setting.

The A3 posters are free to order and can be sent directly to you with free postage.

Request free posters

Staying in touch doesn’t have to be complex, an outreach as simple as sending a message home can help promote parent-child connection.

Explore the contact choices - Residential settings

Send a personal message

If a parent isn’t up for talking with their children right away, supporting them to send a message home can show kids that Mum or Dad is ok and thinking of them.

Bring in something from home

A photo, child’s drawing, or something special from home supports connectedness and encourages conversations with children that are age appropriate and related to everyday things.

Send something special home

Parents can think about what it might mean for children to receive something from them while they’re apart. Parents can make something special for their child, either individually or as part of a group session.

Phone or message

Thoughtful planning can ensure contact is at arranged times and doesn’t distract from the parent’s recovery or add extra pressure on parents or kids.

Spend time with your children

Support parents with a visit plan that is considerate of the service setting and parent’s current level of wellbeing, vulnerability or risk to ensure this contact is most beneficial for parents and children.

Preparing to go home

Take a future and prevention planning approach to ensure support for the parent and whole family when the time comes to go home.

Explore the contact choices - Inpatient settings

Pass on a message

If a parent isn’t up for talking with their children right away, a message home can show kids that Mum or Dad is ok and thinking of them.

Ask for a delivery from home

A photo, child’s drawing, or something special from home supports connectedness and encourages conversations with children that are age appropriate and related to everyday things.

Send something special home

Parents can think about what it might mean for children to receive something from them while they’re apart. Parents can make something special for their child, either individually or as part of a group session.

Phone or message

Thoughtful planning can ensure contact is at arranged times and doesn’t distract from the parent’s recovery or add extra pressure on parents or kids.

Plan a visit

Support parents with a visit plan that is considerate of the service setting and parent’s current level of wellbeing, vulnerability or risk to ensure this contact is most beneficial for parents and children.

Prepare to go home

Take a future and prevention planning approach to ensure support for the parent and whole family when the time comes to go home.

Let’s start talking

 

You can help normalise and encourage conversations about children with parents in mental health inpatient or residential settings.

Implementation support – practice guide

The practice guide outlines ways in which the Keeping in Touch Menu can be used with parents.

The practice guide provides information about:

  • implementation of each contact choice
  • age-appropriate communication with children
  • possible legal requirements relating to child protection orders, family violence and family law
  • utilising a child-focused approach and parental agency in your work.
MH inpatient guide MH residential guide

The practice guide, workshop and action plan offer practical tips for implementing Keeping in Touch in your workplace and managing contact to maximise the benefits for children and parents.

Implementation support – workshop

The workshop presentation is a tool team leaders can use to introduce the Keeping in Touch Menu posters to your workplace.

The workshop is available to download and provides introductory information about the Keeping in Touch resources and how they can support your work with parents.

MH inpatient workshop MH residential workshop

Implementation support – action plan

The action plan has been designed to make the process of implementing the Keeping in Touch Menu in your setting as easy and straightforward as possible.

The plan is available to download and provides clear tasks, actions and recommendations for integrating the KIT Menu into your service offering.

Download the action plan

Other resources:

Emerging Minds also offers a range of free, online courses providing an introduction to child-focused practice:

 

Emerging Minds has webinars, factsheets and podcasts to support work with parental mental health issues, including:

This resource is part of the following toolkits

Discover more resources

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