Home-Start Central Lancashire
There for parents when they need us most,
because childhood can't wait
Home-Start Central Lancashire supported by Chorley Council are working together to support families and answer some of the most commonly asked parenting questions.
These videos provide quick and easy-to-understand advice. If you are continuing to struggle with any of these issues you can contact us for further support.
Trauma Informed Parenting
At Home-Start Central Lancashire, we know through personal and professional experience how difficult parenting can be. This is why we have designed and developed Sweet Chilli Parenting™ workshops for parents and carers who are struggling with challenging behaviour from the children they are raising.
Everyone throughout our organisation from board members to volunteers are trained Trauma Informed Approach Practitioners.
As a result of research, evidence, and experience, we have seen that challenging behaviour due to trauma and/or additional needs, can benefit from a more therapeutic style of parenting that incorporates a trauma informed approach and enables healing.
Sweet Chilli Parenting™ is the result of professional and personal experience, and the brainchild of our current Chief Executive Officer Donna Hussain.
Over 12 years ago after the bereavement of her husband and father of her eight children, Donna began struggling to maintain her job, her home, and the increased demands as a parent, particularly with the behaviour of her two older sons which had become increasing challenging after the death of their father.
Donna sought support, but there was very little help or resources available locally, so she began to research, and purchased training courses that focused on therapeutic parenting and trauma informed practice amongst other things.
With increased knowledge and a better understanding of herself and her children, Donna developed her parenting skills using a therapeutic and trauma informed lens, tailored to meet the needs of her family.
During this time Donna became aware of other parents who were struggling to cope, so in her spare time she supported them to increase their understanding of childhood trauma, brain development, relationships, and attachment, and encouraged them to adopt alternative parenting techniques that were more inclusive and promoted healing.
In 2020 when the world went into lockdown, Home-Start Central Lancashire remained open and continued to support local families. Recognising that the lockdown and pandemic would leave an unprecedented adverse effect on people, families and communities, the Board of Trustees encouraged and supported Donna to develop her idea of therapeutic parenting workshops and Sweet Chilli Parenting™ was born.
The Core Principles of Trauma Informed Parenting
Trauma Informed Parenting, and Sweet Chilli Parenting™ in turn, operates through five core principles, which are followed to ensure an individual’s physical and emotional safety. These are:
Safety
When working with individuals who may have experienced any level of trauma, making sure they are safe both emotionally and physically, is a main priority.
Trustworthiness
The provider must prove to the client that they are trustworthy enough to feel safe enough to open up and become vulnerable. Consistent boundaries and clear expectations of the service experience are required to build trust and rapport.
Choice
By the time an individual finds themselves in need of professional care, they could have spent a significant period of their lives feeling out of control. Choice in planning goals, or things to work on may give the sense of control in their support, and also their life.
Collaboration
The Trauma Informed Approach is a collaboration between the practitioner and the individual. It’s not a strict protocol or rule set, it relies more on empathy and intuition. This means it is different for each person, because everybody has different experiences and individual needs.
Empowerment
This approach to support empowers the family to discover and build on existing strengths. They develop healthier coping skills, and a more solid foundation to fall back to when needed in the future. The Trauma Informed Approach promotes resilience and provides hope that recovery is in fact possible.
Anyone struggling with parenting should give Sweet Chilli Parenting™ workshops a go. They share a different insight into relationships, connection, development, and behaviour, and helps parents to understand themselves and their children better.
You will learn new ways of dealing with challenges and better ways to cope when feeling under pressure. You’ll learn what keeping ‘safe’ means and the best way to do it, and among other things you will learn that you are not alone, there are many more parents going through the same or even worse than what you are going through.
I can guarantee you will be so glad you gave it a go.
How is Sweet Chilli Parenting™ Beneficial?
Sweet Chilli Parenting™ promotes universal parenting techniques that can be used with all children and not just those with trauma or additional needs. It helps parents to understand better the physical and emotional reasons behind challenging behaviours and highlights alternative parenting methods that promote healthier relationships and attachment.
The workshops inspire reflective learning, which can help parents to understand themselves better and enables continuous organic self-development far beyond completion.
Sweet Chilli Parenting™ aims to increase the knowledge and confidence of parents, improve mental and physical wellbeing, healthier relationships, and has the potential to change generational ‘normalised’ patterns of behaviour.
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