Accompanied parenting is a support offer for parents with learning difficulties or with so-called intellectual disabilities and their children. The aim of the support is to enable parents and children to live together and for the children to grow up well while strengthening the parenting skills of the parents.
Support within the framework of accompanied parenting is diverse and is implemented in very different concepts. This is not about creating new, specialized offers, but rather about opening up and including the design of child and youth welfare offers and offers from the field of support for people with disabilities. Cooperation between both areas is a necessary prerequisite.
That we then simply know that we have someone behind us when we have problems. That really takes a stone off your soul.
Support at the interface between child and youth welfare and assistance for people with disabilities
Accompanied parenting is not a complex service, but rather a work term that was coined by specialists who work with parents with learning difficulties and their children. Accompanied parenting combines offers and services from the field of support for people with disabilities and child and youth welfare. This means that the paradigms and working methods of both service areas are the basis of support. Parents with learning difficulties are viewed under the paradigm of self-determination as experts in their own cause and individually supported on the basis of empowerment. At the same time, working with parents and children ensures that parental skills are strengthened and the needs of the children are taken into account,
Areas of Support for Accompanied Parenting
In a broader sense, sexuality, partnership, contraception, and the desire to have children on the one hand, as well as accompaniment of parents who live separated from their children, on the other hand, also thematically belong to the area of accompanied parenting. However, these are very specific areas of focus. The framework concept, therefore, refers to the support of families even during pregnancy. Support from accompanied parenting during pregnancy is useful and necessary in order to reflect the expected need for support after the birth, to apply for benefits, and to set up or search for a support offer or a support network. After birth and, if necessary, until adulthood,
In order to enable parents and children to live together, the primary goal of support is to avoid overburdening the parents and at the same time to expand their own options for action by promoting self-efficacy and self-confidence through encouragement and confirmation. The support ranges from dialogue and advice, through acting support, to taking on tasks and compensatory support.
It is not always possible to ensure the best interests of the child despite support and accompaniment. It is therefore also the task of escorted parenting to process the separation of parents and child and, together with the family and other parties involved, to develop a life perspective for the family in which parents and child do not live together and parents do not have full parental responsibility, the family bond is still maintained.
