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Welcome to Family Links

Family Links front page photos

Family Links is a registered charity promoting loving, kind relationships within families, schools, communities and prisons. We train parenting practitioners to deliver our Nurturing Programme in statutory and voluntary organisations across the UK. We also train school staff to promote a positive ethos in their schools.

The Nurturing Programme provides simple, effective tools to help people understand and manage feelings and behaviour. These are based on Four Constructs - self-awareness and self-esteem, appropriate expectations, positive discipline and empathy. The Nurturing Programme works effectively with all children in any setting and all parents in both group and one-to-one situations. Running the Nurturing Programme in schools through a structured 10-week rolling programme helps reduce staff stress and enables children and young people to feel emotionally safe and able to learn.

The Parenting Puzzle is Family Links’ guidebook through the Nurturing Programme for parents and professionals. Presented in a friendly informal way, The Parenting Puzzle encourages parents and carers to enjoy bringing up children and to get the best out of family life.

Family Links Annual Newsletter 2009

Our Annual Newsletter is downloadable here. Read about the development of The Parenting Puzzle DVD, why The National Academy for Parenting Practitioners is offering our training courses for free and how the Nurturing Programme is being used in prisons and mosques.

Find out about the current Randomised Control Trial of the Nurturing Programme and how external accreditation of our Parenting Programme is proceeding. And discover why CEO Annette Mountford went to Uganda.

Nurturing recipes

Download July's nurturing recipe of the month.

Quotes of the week

Dawn Primarolo, Minister for Children, Young People and Families in Children & Young People Now magazine on:

The importance of early intervention
“We need to redouble our efforts on early intervention because the costs are far greater a few years down the line. I don't want to see us taking the foot off the pedal.”

Integrating health and wellbeing into schools
"It's patently obvious that a healthy child learns better - every practitioner knows that."

The Family Links Bag was recently seen out in Hull during National Family Week.

Fish Trail National Family Week 2009 Hull

To see where else the bag goes, visit Flickr

New Products from Family Links

Islamic Values booklet

Islamic Values and The Parenting Puzzle

This booklet quotes and analyses extracts from the Quran, hadiths and The Parenting Puzzle, demonstrating how Family Links' Nurturing Programme is in tune with Islamic religious beliefs. It has a foreword from Professor Tariq Ramadan. A useful addition when running the Nurturing Programme with Muslim parents, it is to be used with The Parenting Puzzle.

Priced at £7.50 (+£1 postage)

Family Links photos

You can now view a slideshow of photos from Family Links' trainings across the UK and beyond at Flickr

The Nurturing Programme Parent Group Leader training free through NAPP

Our Parent Group Leader training is now available as part of the National Academy for Parenting Practitioners' free training offer. The Nurturing Programme is one of the first parenting programmes to be validated by NAPP as part of its overhaul of The Commissioning Toolkit of Parenting Programmes.

To find out more please contact Rebecca Smith, Training Manager: by email: Rebecca Smith or by phone: 01865 401 800

The Parenting Puzzle DVD

This animated DVD is a series of 10 episodes featuring scenes from life with the Basset and Jones families. The scenes bring to life the simple, effective tools that the Nurturing Programme provides to help parents and children understand and manage their feelings and behaviour.

An excellent tool for visual learners or those with learning or literacy difficulties.

Priced at £12 (+£1 postage)