When rearing children is not a 'walk in the park'

MIND MOVES:Telling the story of a unique support network for families with young children

THIS WEEK saw the launch of a unique book entitled Tea and Friends. It celebrates the stories of families in Blanchardstown who have been supported over the past 21 years in raising small children.

This publication is the outcome of a partnership between Home-Start, an organisation of volunteers who provide listening, friendship and practical support to families with at least one child under five, and third-level students from DIT who researched and designed this anthology of remarkable stories.

In launching this book, one of the DIT students described how she and her classmates became involved with this project through the DIT Students Learning With Communities programme.

These students offered to document the experiences of mothers, fathers and children, who have been involved with Home-Start since its inception. She described how 39 students from her class were bussed to a community centre in Blanchardstown to meet with these families.

They were nervous, they had no experience of working so directly with families and they were all too aware of their limited research expertise. Yet they were welcomed and made feel at ease almost immediately.

They were struck by the warmth and openness of these families, and by the extent to which visits from Home-Start volunteers had been a lifeline and a lifesaver to so many of them.

These students transcribed and documented the personal stories of these parents, and their contemporaries in DIT graphic design studies took responsibility for designing and printing the book itself.

One of the dads spoke at the launch and described how he had always believed that parenting would be “a walk in the park”, and how rapidly that illusion got shattered. His children didn’t quite meet the criteria of any “special needs” diagnosis, but he and his wife still found rearing them to be highly stressful.

A visiting health nurse had invited them to accept some support and they gladly availed of this offer. Every week a Home-Start volunteer, someone from that neighbourhood, visited them. In a very simple way they listened, they offered practical assistance with shopping, babysitting among other helpful things, and they gradually built up a deeply trusting relationship with this man’s family.

He made the point that while his children did not have a dramatic or obvious disability, they presented particular challenges that required some level of support.

His children were typical of those who fall between the cracks of our health system: they have significant levels of stress but they don’t meet the criteria for professional intervention.

Through befriending the family in a completely natural and non-judgmental way, Home-Start had reduced the level of stress in the family, and given the parents a greater faith in their own ability to nurture and raise their children.

This man’s experience was repeated over and over again in the wonderful stories that are documented in this book. In addition to visits from volunteers, parents had an opportunity to meet each other weekly over coffee and to provide solidarity and support for one another.

Reading these stories, I was struck by the gems of insight they each contained about what really makes the difference for people in stressful situations.

They described the critical role of people who are willing to reach out to others and offer whatever they can to vulnerable neighbours. These are the silent heroes of community life, and their impact is both powerful and subtle.

These volunteers connected with parents who had become isolated through trauma, bereavement or separation. People who had suddenly found themselves to be “outsiders’’ in their own community, people who were unsure who they could reach out to for support.

When offered help from local volunteers, they took the courageous step of inviting them in and allowing a bond of friendship to develop with them.

Tea and Friendsreminds us all of what it means to feel like you are a part of a community, rather than isolated within the confines of the four walls of your home. When we reach out to those around us who are vulnerable, and when another accepts our offer of support, a kind of magic unfolds in the hearts of everyone involved.

We all gain something and we feel more connected through such interactions. We experience that elusive word “empowerment” in a real way – we feel our strength, but we also accept that we can’t go

it alone, and that we don’t have to.

• Tea and Friendsis available from homestartireland @eircom.net

• Tony Bates is founder director of Headstrong – the National Centre for Youth Mental Health, www.headstrong.ie