We are happy that Coreaner Price, family partner with Families as Allies, had the opportunity to share her experiences with parent peer support at this past Saturday’s Hope Rising’s Virtual Suicide Preventions Summit. Some of her comments really captured the essence of parent peer support and we wanted to share those words with you.
“Family peer support allows you to be you and feel no judgment. Can you imagine being in a place where you feel I have failed at being a mother, where did I go wrong, why is this happening to me, what to do when you don’t know what to do and to have that person who comes in with all the right words to say because they were once there.”
“Working together supporting families with what they need, not what we think they need, is a way for families to see they are the driving force in the care of their children. Parents are the strongest advocates for their children.”
Parent peer support is a positive and powerful experience, not just for individual families but for moving systems and policies forward in ways that are most helpful to children and families. Families as Allies is committed to working with families, policy makers and all of our state agencies to establish meaningful and effective parent peer support across systems and settings.
We commend the Mississippi State Department of Health for using parent consultants in its Children and Youth with Special Health Care Needs program and are excited to partner in this work. We are also glad to work with the Mississippi Department of Mental Health (DMH) in recruiting and training parent peer support specialists. The next DMH training is November 16 – 20 and we encourage any interested parents or caregivers (people other than parents who are raising a child, such as a grandparent or foster parent) to register for the training by November 9 at this link.
You can learn more about what parent peer support is and national competencies for it through the National Federation of Families Certification website.
