Enroll in our training for facilitators and learn firsthand how to use our experiential, evidence-informed curricula to run a Parenting Journey program within your organization.
Parenting Journey Model
The Parenting Journey model is recognized by state and private agencies as an effective program for engaging parents who have experienced stressful or traumatic events and for parents who are seeking community, support, and guidance on how to be more effective parents.
Parenting Journey programs are designed to help mothers, fathers, and caregivers increase their confidence and resilience while laying the groundwork for strong family relationships. The group facilitator is both counselor and educator, and he or she establishes a safe atmosphere with supportive limits in which parents can express themselves and integrate their emotional experiences with their cognitive understanding.
Parenting Journey programs run for 2 hours a week for 12 or 14 weeks.
Facilitator Trainings
Our professional development trainings prepare human service professionals to interact with families and their colleagues in a supportive and reflective way to ensure that families are receiving consistent communication across all the services they access.
Parenting Journey offers immersive 5-day facilitator trainings for professionals interested in implementing Parenting Journey programs at their agency. Through hands-on activities, active engagement, and self-reflection, participants will master the experiential Parenting Journey curriculum as well as group management and facilitation techniques. This immersion model guarantees that trainees have a strong understanding of how their parent populations might experience the program, and are themselves changed by the reflection and community building that takes place.
Our easy-to-follow curricula, developed over nearly three decades, provides step-by-step guidance for the program’s agenda, goals, guiding questions, and activities. The facilitator training provides opportunities for participants to facilitate sections of the curriculum and to receive constructive feedback from the trainer and other training participants. By the end of the facilitator training program, participants will be fully prepared to return to their organization and begin conducting a Parenting Journey program with the parents and caregivers they support.
Trainees are given a toolkit that includes: the curriculum for each session, background information on starting a new group, facilitation tips, and unique props.
Parenting Journey regularly offers trainings at our offices in Somerville, MA and New York, NY. Upon request, Parenting Journey can also provide onsite trainings at your office location.
**Due to COVID-19, all trainings will be virtual until further notice.**
For more details, contact Lydia Carbone at lcarbone@parentingjourney.org.
View Upcoming Training DatesIs Parenting Journey Right for Your Agency?
Parenting Journey programs can benefit individuals from all walks of life. Participants represent a racially, ethnically, culturally, and economically diverse population, raising children of all ages. Among those who can benefit from our programs are:
- Working parents struggling to juggle personal and professional obligations.
- Parents seeking community and support.
- Parents of diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds.
- Parents who have experienced violence or childhood trauma.
- Parents responding to protective services and/or court mandates.
- Parents in recovery.
- Parents with mental health challenges.
- Parents in preventative programs.
- Parents raised in foster care.
- Grandparents and other caregivers raising children.
Benefits to Parent Participants
Through the course of the program, parents embark on a journey of self-reflection and self-care. Though each individual has their own unique experience, we know from over 30 years of program implementation that there are some common impactful outcomes. Parenting Journey will help parents to:
- Identify their strengths and increase their resiliency.
- Gain insight about the connections between their parents’ behavior and their own behavior as a parent.
- Build greater trust, honesty, and connections to others.
- Expand their capacity to empathize and forgive.
- Increase their ability to nurture themselves and their children.
- Determine their personal path towards happiness and positive parenting.
- Access and utilize community resources.
- Learn to deal with everyday stressors and challenging situations.
- Make new friends and increase their support network.
- Become more confident and optimistic about achieving personal goals.
Partnerships
Our partnerships with family-service agencies use reflective practices to enhance programs and policies to create a collective environment that values parents’ inherent strengths, power, and expertise.
- Our partner agencies are located across Massachusetts, New York, New England, and the tri-state area.
- We have trained staff at over 500 partner agencies.
To learn more about partnership opportunities, please Lydia Carbone at lcarbone@parentingjourney.org.
Who Benefits from Our Trainings and Partnerships?
Parenting Journey partnerships and facilitator trainings can benefit a wide variety of service agencies, including:
- Family service programs
- Foster care programs
- Community centers
- Neighborhood development agencies
- Schools
- Human service agencies
- Shelters
- Churches and other religious centers
- Mental health clinics
- Public housing agencies
- Medical organizations
Read one parent’s inspiring story here.
