This month, Parents 1st UK CEO, Celia Suppiah, spoke with Vita Maiorano, Director of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation to hear how The Family by Family Project has adapted to providing virtual support to families across Australia.
Prototyping and co-designing with families is core to the Family by Family model. They’re not afraid to fail; learning from feedback has allowed them to respond and continually adapt to ensure they’re providing a service that works for families.
COVID-19 has impacted families in varying degrees across the nation. The impact of physical distancing for parents and children has reduced mobility, with children in particular impacted by:
- Reduced play options;
- Distance learning and increased technology/screen time;
- Reduced socialisation with other children, having varying impacts on children depending on age;
- Increased home living, in places with bigger allotments that’s been ok however for children living in apartments, there have been challenging;
- Home schooling and parents being both teachers and parents – the juggle has been challenging.
These have all contributed to increased family stress, as there are fewer opportunities for individual space. This teamed with job losses and reduced income for many, has resulted in increased family unrest and crisis – with in some cases lock down leading to increased family violence and drug and alcohol misuse.
The effect this stress has on mental health is a big concern. As Vita explains…
"We’ve also seen increased mental health concerns, with many feeling the constant change that living in a COVID world has resulted in increased anxiety across more and more people.
Whilst there have been increased focused on provision of supports for crisis responses and helplines, we’ve seen a difference in how community responds between metro vs regional. Australian Institute of Family Studies has found that families in metropolitan areas were provided with emotional supports and were lacking in the more tangible ‘practical’ help of food/shopping verses regional/rural families receiving practical helps but lacking in the emotional help. Both indicate the difference in how community helps out and different contexts provide for different kinds of supports."
Peer to peer supports can help build both emotional and practical supports, which we have seen maintained through Family by Family and the newly developed Virtual Village.
What new digital peer to peer response has resulted from the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia?
"As COVID came to Australia we were asked to develop a digital peer to peer response to support families during lock down, particularly given the projected impacts lock down would have on families.
We found that families needed this kind of responses before COVID and are now in the 26th week of a rapid prototype of a peer to peer intensive family support response focused on connected regional and rural families.
We’ve found that many families living in regional and rural locations want peer support but feel more comfortable gaining that support from a peer living in another regional town. This helps with issues of confidentiality particularly where there are concerns of family violence in the home. We’ve got peer volunteers supporting families who live over 500km away via digital platforms of zoom, messenger, facetime and the old faithful phone."
What perinatal support are you offering?
Whilst neither FBYF or The Virtual Village don’t exclusively focus on perinatal supports, we’ve had a number of connections where peer support has worked to:
- Support teen Mum’s adjust to motherhood and learn how best to support their newborn and growing child;
- Helped role model parenting and healthy food for growing children;
- Help build family routines and rituals to create the right environment for rest and play, ultimately supporting the whole family to grow and thrive.
It’s quite amazing to see what can be achieved from peer to peer supports, and the value reciprocity creates for both the peer and the family receiving the support – it’s a wonderful regenerative cycle of community building – helping both families build efficacy and create new opportunities for themselves and those around them.