What's New 

Website Launch

 

On Friday the 28th of May, The Hon Minister Linda Burney MP, Minister for the State Plan and Minister for Community Services officially launched Parent Line’s website at the Polding Centre in Sydney City.

The Parent Line team were thrilled to officially launch the website, which is a parent friendly resource that provides information about contemporary parenting issues that counsellors deal with on a regular basis.

The concept behind the “info sheets” is to give parents & carers an opportunity to get a feel for how the Parent Line team would work with specific issues and also to get some practical tips on parenting topics.  

The website also has a range of parenting stories written by the counselling team. The team wanted to give a strong message that all parents struggle with issues from time to time and these challenges are a normal part of parenting. The website also includes links to other support services.

Representatives from government departments and community organisations joined the Parent Line staff to celebrate the launch of the website.

  

Minister Burney speaking at the launch

The launch was also an opportunity to highlight recent trends in the work that Parent Line does.  Recent statistics show that parents living in rural and remote NSW are less likely to contact services for help, unless they are experiencing a family crisis such as their adolescent child running away or becoming violent in the home.

Parents across NSW, but particularly from rural and remote NSW, are encouraged to contact support services as issues arise. The message was that no issue is too big or too small to contact our service for support and assistance.

 
Another issue that is currently emerging is the increase in calls from parents of adolescents. The feedback that the program had received from parents, is that there are less services for parents once their children were in the adolescent age group and the issues parents face can be challenging and complex. For this reason, Parent Line has added a lot of new content about parenting adolescents.

The staff at Parent Line have made a commitment to continue to further develop the content on the website, especially on current issues that parents face.

 

Some of the Parent Line team with Minister Burney, Michael West from the Aboriginal Land Council and senior CatholicCare managers