Enhance your skills and understanding

eLearning courses

• ‘Child Aware practice’ – Covers a range of activities designed to ensure that children of parents with mental illness get appropriate support from services that are working with their parents and carers.
  
• ‘Supervision for children’s wellbeing’ – For supervisors of front-line staff in adult-focused health and social services, to support staff to develop ‘Child Aware’ practice.

Other resources

• Response Ability factsheet: Children of Parents with a Mental Illness
• KidsMatter webinar (September, 2015) – ‘Supporting children of parents with a mental illness, in schools and early childhood services’
• KidsMatter Early Childhood website – Comprehensive information for early childhood education and care settings about promoting children’s mental health, social and emotional learning, working with families and supporting children with mental health difficulties.
• Helping to piece the puzzle together – Useful suggestions for workers in the early childhood area who are supporting children and families where a parent has a mental illness. Order free hard copies here, with free postage within Australia).
• Zero To Three – Tips on nurturing a child’s social-emotional development.
• Early Head Start – What does Infant Mental Health (IMH) mean? And, how do EHS programs implement quality IMH services? Tip Sheet No. 22.
• Response Ability factsheet – Social and emotional learning.
• Grief and Loss – A useful article on how children grieve and understand grief and loss.
• Calmer classrooms – A guide to working with traumatised children that assists kindergarten, primary and secondary teachers, and other school staff to understand and work with children and young people whose lives have been affected by trauma.  Calmer Classrooms particularly addresses the needs of children who have been traumatised by abuse and neglect.
• KidsMatter’s free online training – Connecting with families: Conversations that make a difference supports early childhood educators and teachers in their work with families.
• Dealing with a crisis – An article instructing on crisis: how children react and how to help them.
• Reducing Maternal Depression and Its Impact on Young Children; Toward a Responsive Early Childhood Policy Framework – ( Policy) – Read the report: (2008) J Knitzer,  S Theberge, K Johnson. National Centre for Children in Poverty, Columbia University, New York.
• Browse free COPMI materials (including translated texts) – Delivery is free within Australia.
• The COPMI resource collection – Comprehensive resources on COPMI-related topics.
• See Gateway to Evidence that Matters (GEMS) research summaries of recent Australian and international research relating to children (aged 0-18 years) of parents with a mental illness, their parents and families.