In Shropshire, we recognise how important the role of parents and carers is, and how difficult that role can be without the knowledge of appropriate strategies that can be used to deal with everyday parenting challenges. The aim for all parents is to raise healthy, well-rounded children in a loving, stable environment, and it's our hope that we can support parents, carers and communities to do this.
All our work is underpinned and informed by the Solihull Approach. If you would like to find out more about this evidence-based approach please visit their website.
Understanding Your Child/Teen clinics
Parenting Helpline
Parenthood can be extremely rewarding and enjoyable. It can also be demanding, frustrating and exhausting. Our parenting team is here to support parent and carers to raise healthy, well-rounded children in a loving and stable environment.
Do you have any questions around child development and parenting?
Why not call our Parenting Helpline where one of our trained Parenting Practitioners will be ready to listen to you.
The helpline is open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9am to 12:30pm. Call 01743 250950.
If you have concerns about a child’s safety or well-being please call First Point of Contact on 0345 678 9021.
If you would like to find out about other services, the parenting team offers please email parenting.team@shropshire.gov.uk
Understanding Your Child/Teen - groups and workshops
In Shropshire we offer ‘Understanding Your Child’ and ‘Understanding Your Teen’ parenting workshops and groups based on the Solihull Approach. This offers a highly practical way of working with families within a robust theoretical structure.
The parenting group aims to:
- Promote understanding of children’s behaviour within the context of developmental issues
- Promote the development of parent/child relationship
- Increase confidence and self-esteem in both parents and children
- Give parents a strategy for repair when things go wrong
- Promote reflective, sensitive and effective parenting
The group has been designed to offer parenting support for families who want to learn more, and who may or may not be experiencing some difficulties with their children. Although there's an established provision for universal groups, there's also provision for families who may be experiencing more complex challenges and require more targeted support. These targeted groups are delivered by professionals experienced in working with families with more complex levels of need.
We provide both universal and targeted groups for families with children with SEND.
We also offer the online version of the understanding your child course free to Shropshire parents. It's available on the 'In our place' website and the code parents need is DARWIN18
If you're looking for an 'Understanding Your Child/Teen' group please visit the Family Information Service website.
Free online courses
We have a multi-user license for a variety of online course which enables all residents of Shropshire to access any of these courses for free.
Online courses are a great way to access support at a time and place which suits you and your family. The courses are all split into short modules, each around 20 minutes long and you can access the courses whenever you like. Your access does not expire. Why not try out the taster course Understanding your child’s feelings!
For more information on these online courses visit Solihull Approach parenting website and to get started.
Gain free access to the online courses by simply entering access code DARWIN18 to any or all of the courses below:
- Understanding pregnancy, labour, birth and your baby
- Understanding pregnancy, labour, birth and your baby: for women couples
- Understanding your baby
- Understanding your child
- Understanding your teenager’s brain
- Understanding my brain (for teenagers only)
- Understanding your child with additional needs
- Understanding your child’s feelings (taster course)
We are always interested in your views and feedback to develop and improve our service offer and would appreciate if could complete a short (less than 5 minutes) survey. It is completely anonymous and none of your details will be accessible to us.