Oxford Spires Rotary - Guest Speakers

Annette Mountford, CEO of Family Links

http://www.familylinks.org.uk/index.htm

Annette gave a fascinating talk about Family Links, the organisation that she co-founded in 1997. Family Links is “dedicated to promoting emotional wellbeing, relationship skills and positive behaviour through the Nurturing Programme”.

It works with families and schools and in prisons, and from working with 12 parents and 14 children in its first year, it has grown into a national training organisation, training professionals across the UK, with a turnover of over £900,000.

Family Links delivers the Nurturing Programme, initially developed in the 1970s in Denver Colorado. The programme is taught to parents over a ten week period and in schools, through training all the teachers in a school. This enables children to benefit from the same language and the same concepts at home and at school.

Approximately half of the Oxford Spires group members are parents, so Annette tested us on a few facts:

-          A child doesn’t understand the difference between being kicked on purpose and being kicked accidently until he reaches the age of 8 to 10 years

-          Over one day the ratio of negative to positive comments that a five year child may receive can be 10 – 20:1

-          The empathy part of the brain shuts down from the age of 13 to 18, so parents have to provide all the empathy at this stage

We were shown the Parenting Puzzle book, which is used as a guide through the Nurturing Programme.

http://www.familylinks.org.uk/parenting/parent_stuff.htm

For the year ending March 2009, £290K of the £927K income was from donations and grants and £397K was from the provision of training. In 2008/09 Family Link trained 680 Parent Group Leaders. It reaches 20,000 new parents annually and benefits approximately 50,000 children.

Michael Saunders presented Annette with a cheque for £250 for Family Links from the Oxford Spires group.