One of the most important things we do at Unique Ways is to offer training courses for parent carers, helping you to build your skills and resilience, learn tools and tactics for dealing with schools, health services and Local Authorities, and develop a person-centred method of dealing with your child’s additional needs.
Courses are free for Unique Ways members, and are led by our own fully trained and qualified practitioners. Most of our team are also parent carers themselves, so you can be sure that our courses are being led by someone who knows what you’re going through, and really is there to help.
A number of the parents who complete our courses also go on to help our practitioners deliver sessions, passing on what they’ve learned and ensuring we bring as many perspectives and experiences as we can to the table.
Our courses
The Insider’s Guide
This group-based learning course focuses on building resilience and finding practical solutions to everyday challenges. The Insider’s Guide helps parent carers to build up their confidence, develop trust with professionals, and improve communication with their child and others to help them feel positive about their abilities as parents. There are a number of variants to the course available, including for under-fives, under-12s, teens, and children with complex health needs or challenging behaviour issues.
Parenting for Health and Emotional Wellbeing (PHEW)
This course is for parent carers of 11 to 18-year-olds with additional needs, and focuses on building a parenting relationship with teens that supports their mental health. Many parent carers who come to Unique Ways worry about their child’s emotional wellbeing, and whether they can provide the support they need, so the aim of the course is to share tools, ideas and insight that will help you to recognise and improve the mental health and wellbeing of your teen.
Preparing for Your Child’s Future
This person-centred planning course is focused on building a better understanding of aspirational planning, processes, potential services (including specialist services) and wealth of community. If your child has additional needs or a disability, and you are requesting an EHC assessment or are unsure if you need one, then the Planning for Your Child’s Future course can help. It is also very useful for parent carers that already have a Special Educational Needs (SEN) statement in place for their child, and need to transfer it to an EHC plan.
Preparing for Transition
This course focuses on helping parent carers of young people who are approaching a big change in their lives – moving from school into college, or moving from college into the wider world. The course focuses on building parent carers’ skills to help them support their child as they take the next step in their lives.
