Enhance your skills and understanding
eLearning courses
- ‘Keeping families and children in mind’ – An introductory course for mental health and allied health professionals. It supports practitioners to understand the impact of parental mental illness on the entire family and to recognise the benefits of a family-sensitive approach to working with parents experiencing mental illness.
(RACGP QI and CPD Program Category 1: 40 points) - ‘Supporting infants and toddlers of parents with mental illness’ – For adult mental health professionals working with parents of young children where the parent has a mental illness.This course helps mental health workers to identify and intervene when their clients are parents who experience mental illness and have dependent children.
- ‘Let’s talk about children’ – A brief, evidence-based method designed to assist mental health professionals and parents who experience mental illness to have a structured discussion about parenting and their child’s needs. (RACGP QI and CPD Program Category 1: 40 points)
- ‘Family focus’ – An evidence-based, time-limited family intervention that aims to strengthen family communication, problem-solving and resilience. (RACGP QI and CPD Program Category 1: 40 points)
- ‘Child Aware practice’ – Covers a range of activities designed to ensure that children of parents with mental illness get appropriate support from the services that are working with their parents and carers.
- ‘Child Aware supervision’ – For supervisors of front-line staff in adult-focused health and social services, to support staff to develop ‘Child Aware’ practice.
Other resources
- Mental Health Treatment Plan for adults and Mental Health Treatment Plan for children – incorporating parent and child needs (now on the GPMHSC website)
- Guidelines for general practitioners – This flow chart provides guidance for general practitioners to support children of parents with a mental illness.
- 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.