WORKING WITH YOUNG PARENTS Sarah Bramwell Manager, Child Deaths and Critical Reports Office of the Senior Practitioner

WHAT WE DO? Office of the Senior Practitioner Review Cohort reviews, annual report Practice reviews, learning forums Recommendations Work with oversight agencies WHY WE DO IT? Organisational Learning Practice Improvement Systems Improvement Accountability

Office of the Senior Practitioner Working with young parents Data analysis: -105 children who died between 2006 and 2011 and had a parent aged 21 or under compared with: -285 children who died between 2006 and 2011 whose parents were over 22 years.

Office of the Senior Practitioner Key findings from the review Young parentsOlder parents Parent’s history of abuse and neglect as a child86%39% Parent leaving/left care25%11% Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander family41%27%

Office of the Senior Practitioner Circumstances of death

Office of the Senior Practitioner Working with young parent families Practice themes: 1.Assessing risk in young parent families. 2.Engaging young parents to build their parenting capacity. 3.Maintaining a focus on a child in a young parent family.

Office of the Senior Practitioner Engaging young parents to build parenting capacity -Engaging vulnerable young parents early – a ‘window of opportunity’. -Effective engagement with young parents. -Engaging young fathers.

Office of the Senior Practitioner Maintaining a focus on the child in a young parent family -The risk of over-identification in young parent families: Over-identification is when workers project onto the parents our own feelings and qualities we believe that we have towards children, instead of empathising with and facing the parents’ and children’s realities. We ignore or reduce the aspects of the parents’ personality and life that place great burdens on the child. We attribute to the parents more resources for further development than they have. (Killen, 1996)

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