Shaping Ourselves and Our Children: Building the foundations of good community relations in family life (SOOC)

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Shaping Ourselves & Our Children: Building the foundations of good community relations in family life’ (SOOC) is an innovative inter-generational project aimed at promoting reconciliation & good relations by the addressing the site where human values & social attitudes are initially formed & shaped i.e. the Home Learning Environment, where the parent is the key actor. The home is the most intimate & fundamental unit in any society & community; one that links personal identity & wider social & cultural processes. In spite of political & social progress made over the last 20 years, many communities in NI & the border region are still characterised by social isolation, segregation & division & by fear, mistrust, intolerance, sectarianism & racism, now overlaid by increased ethnic diversity. Many of today’s parents experienced conflict-related trauma themselves as children or were raised by parents affected by violence, loss & trauma; experiences that have influenced parents’ capacities to establish compassionate & adaptive relationships with their children essential to good child outcomes & reproducing in many homes trans-generational cycles & conflict-related narratives that transmit & extend the legacy of the conflict from one generation to the next. Improving empathy, understanding, trust & respect is recognised in policy as one of two key conditions for improving social & community relations. The second is improving equality of opportunity. This project aims to contribute to addressing both these objectives by addressing issues of parenting & child development in the home from a good relations perspective. The LF is an all-Ireland body with 30 years’ experience in parenting & child development. We & 4 of our partners specialise in delivering an evidence-based programme, the Growing Child, on a one-to-one basis to parents in their homes. In this project we will be collaborating with The Junction, an organisation with specialised expertise in peace & reconciliation training to develop a new evidence-informed group-based parenting programme that will bring together parents from different backgrounds & communities & support them to reflect on the impact of the legacy of the conflict & their own social attitudes & practices on their children & their child’s social attitudes & life chances. Policy frameworks in both children & family support services & in the peace & reconciliation sector recognise the importance of home & family life in the social & emotional development of children, on how children relate to one another & to the social world & to the trans-generational transmission of the traumatic & other legacies of the conflict & violence. Yet parenting support programme are generally not designed from a good relations perspective nor are parenting practitioners trained to deliver parenting support from a good relations focus. The SOOC will address this gap.

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