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Children's Mental Health Advocate
 
Mental Health Advocate

Dilemmas and Strategies

The dilemma:

A school is setting up a 2 hour education session for parents of children with emotional challenges. She is struggling with trying to get attendance. She runs other parent sessions and says it usually goes well for parents with kids with autism, but she has trouble getting the parents of kids with mental illness/emotional problems to the groups.

Suggested solutions:

  • Parents often do things for their child that they will not do for themselves. Arrange and a space where the students can attend an event simultaneous to the parents session: an art project around a social skill, like friendship making. Advertise as a `class' for students that is free, but the parents had to attend the meeting with the speaker. Siblings from other schools could attend the class.
  • Present the info to area providers, especially agencies that provide child case management or area pediatricians so that they can prompt the parents as well regarding the opportunity. Sometimes getting the information regarding the event from multiple sources can increase the likelihood that they will attend.
  • Have the sessions on a Sat. or Sun. in the early afternoon. Two hours doesn't sound like a lot of time but when you figure in work/school, then homework, possible after school activities, dinner, and the numerous counseling appointments that parents attend during the week, it might as well be 12 hours! Weekends are much less hectic. I agree with the childcare, possibly you could use college students in early childhood education, or students looking for some volunteer work to add to their scholarship applications.
  • Provide childcare. Use kids from national honor society, church youth group, etc. They are reliable and it helps them meet their community service hours. A surprise benefit is that some of the kids do this because they are thinking of becoming teachers and the experience has led them in the direction of spec ed.
  • Provide details, location, information, to your local Parent Council.
  • Go to the schools and talk with the Special Ed teachers.
  • Have teachers pass out flyers at Open-House or conferences.
  • Have teachers pass out a flyer about the program with a phone number for parents to call.
  • Get flyers to the districts alternative school sites.
  • Partner with a school social worker or a school psychologist or counselor. They can identify parents who would benefit from the program, personally contact them, or see them at school and give them a flyer about the presentation.
  • Provide dinner. Pizza, pop, and chips always work for me.
  • Schedule the session to begin around 5-6pm, offering dinner, so that people don't go home. Once they get home it is much harder to get them to come back out.
  • Schedule at 3 or 4 pm. Parents would take off work an hour or so early, it didn't cut into their dinner time. For those parents who needed it, give them a letter for their employer that stated there was a mandatory meeting at school regarding their child.
  • Put information in the community newspaper.
  • Network with the parents and special ed supervisors/administrators and they put a flyer in every child's backpack.
  • Put ads on the schools cable TV channel.
  • Go on the local radio show and be interviewed about the upcoming workshops.
  • Have the Family Children First Council agencies distribute flyers.
  • Have the parent group of the school promote the sessions.
  • Continuously do needs surveys, all year, giving them out all year to parents. Compile the data at the end of the year and plan programming for the upcoming school year based on that data. Post the needs survey on your website. Survey also asked best time day/day of week for programs.
  • Combine training programming with local parent training center such as the Ohio Coalition for the Education of Children with Disabilities

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