PARENTS AND guardians of selected youngsters attending four high schools are currently benefiting from an intensified version of the Parenting Programme operated by Youth Opportunities Unlimited (Y.O.U.).
The adolescents whose families are involved are among those enrolled in mentoring and other support programmes operated by Y.O.U. at Clan Carthy High, Kingston College, Tarrant High and Kingston High School.
The Y.O.U. Parenting Programme, which will be targeting an estimated 1,500 parents and guardians over the current academic year, providing parents and guardians with child rearing techniques which would once have been passed on by older family members.
It also fosters parent support groups, encourages and strengthens parental involvement with schools, and teaches some of the specialised skills so necessary in the modern world, such as advocacy, effective communications and stress management.
The Parenting Programme, funded by UNICEF through the Coalition for Better Parenting, is operated as a structured part of each school's regular parent teacher meetings.
Parental apathy
The Parenting Workshops are held monthly for ten month per year. Faced with parental apathy and declining numbers among the targeted participants during the first half of 2000, Y.O.U. launched an innovative new outreach to parents at the beginning of the current academic year.
It was launched with a Parenting Empowerment project, piloted at Kingston High School (formerly Kingston Comprehensive High) at 172 King Street. Under this project, over 300 parents and guardians received a very special welcome when they brought their children in to register for the new school term. Over four days during the week before school reopened on September 4, they were given motivational talks by members of the Y.O.U. team, presented with an information kit featuring a range of important information relevant to themselves and their children, taken on a tour of the school to encourage them to feel part of the "school family", and treated to refreshments.
The new outreach also saw Y.O.U. making motivational presentations to full PTA meetings at Kingston College and Tarrant High, and at the parenting Week Programme of Clan Carthy High. This included addresses by Trainers Marguerite Newland and Elaine Wint Leslie on "The Parent School Relationship" at Tarrant and Clan Carthy.
According to Mrs. Sheila Nicholson, attendance has increased dramatically at the two schools where the Y.O.U. Parenting Workshops have already got underway. At Kingston High, where attendance had been no more than twelve, and at Kingston College, where it had been previously reached a high of 30, the workshops this term are being attended by up to 80 parents and guardians, including a turnout of 30 one very rainy afternoon.
