Promoting positive parenting crucial for reducing child abuse

The release of The People’s Report from the Glenn Inquiry has once again highlighted New Zealand’s distressing child abuse and domestic violence statistics and reinforced the view that “asking for help is fraught”, said Dale Powles, Manager of Parent Help – a helpline service for parents faced with the challenges and stresses of parenting in today’s world.

“We know from our own statistics that more and more parents are struggling with raising their children and they often don’t know where to turn for positive parenting support. It’s important that they know it’s OK to ask for help” said Powles, whose Parent Help line also provides information and support to anyone concerned with the safety of a child or children.

“In our experience over the past 25 years, one of the most effective ways of reducing the risk of child abuse is providing integrated support to worried parents, including phone counselling, family therapy and parenting programmes”, Powles said.

Parent Help has, since 1989, provided these services as part of a wider network of family violence and child abuse prevention agencies.

Parent Help is expanding the Helpline nationwide to meet the needs of parents and families throughout New Zealand.

Powles added that “Parent Help looks forward to supporting new initiatives to reduce child abuse and domestic violence in New Zealand and to being part of the solution to protect our children.”

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