Working with parents affected by alcohol and other drug use: Considering the needs of children in practice webinar

This course provides you with an introduction to the impact of parental alcohol and other drugs (AOD) use, or substance use, on children. This course is the first in a suite of parental substance use courses. The core course, Parental Substance Use and Child-Aware Practice: Principles and Practices, should be completed second.

This course examines preventative opportunities and entry points to promote children’s mental health with parents in the context of parental substance use. It provides examples of conversations with parent-clients who are using substances in ways that affect the social and emotional wellbeing of their children. The course will provide you with a conversation guide, which is easily incorporated into your current practice, to assist your work with parents who are affected by substance use. This guide recognises the challenges for practitioners in working with presentations of substance use. It also recognises the importance of making children’s safety and social and emotional wellbeing visible in all services.

More than ever, practitioners are tasked with engaging mothers with co-existing issues in conversations about the social and emotional wellbeing of their children. The ability to have these conversations in ways that focus on the child’s needs, while not further stigmatising disadvantaged mothers, is an increasingly necessary skill.