Parenting and Family Supportive Counselling: Raising healthy children is a difficult but rewarding challenge for many parents. For newcomer, refugee and single parent families the hurdles and challenges are greater than anticipated. Newcomer, immigrant and refugee parents and grandparents need support to raise healthy children in a new country with different culture and values and language. More and more women and grandparents are responsible for raising their children or grandchildren. Sometimes the resources are not enough and families are at greater risk of abuse, poverty and isolation. The result is that parents and grandparents lack the confidence and self-esteem to raise their children or grandchildren and believe they cannot cope with the challenges. The Centre provides support to parents and families in coping with the many challenges and rewards of raising healthy children.

Nobody’s Perfect Parenting Groups: Many parents and grandparents lack the social networks and supports in order to become parent more effectively. Connecting, sharing and building skills with peers are often effective tools in addressing the lack of confidence, self-esteem and skills when parenting. The Centre offers parenting groups. In the groups, participants learn about child development, effective discipline methods, information on Canadian institutions and service. But more importantly, participants share skills, views and ideas. Many of the participants develop social support networks once the group is finished. Often many state that they feel more confident in parenting their children and using the techniques they learned when in the group.