Shropshire Council

Understanding your child - the Solihull Approach

Parenting support in Shropshire

Parenthood can be extremely rewarding and enjoyable. It can also be demanding, frustrating and exhausting. Parents have the important role of raising the next generation, yet most people begin their careers as parents with little preparation, and learn through trial and error. The challenge for all parents is to raise healthy, well-adjusted children in a loving, predictable environment.

In Shropshire we offer a programme of two-day foundation training in the Solihull Approach to professionals who are working with and supporting families as part of their everyday practice.

Solihull Approach

The Solihull Approach is a highly practical way of working with families within a robust theoretical structure. It's an early intervention model and is also used in preventative and group work. It has a major contribution to make to the ways in which practitioners in health, education, voluntary and social care can work with families to ensure that children have a good emotional start in life.

The Solihull Approach model combines three theoretical concepts:

  • Containment (psychoanalytic theory)
  • Reciprocity (child development)
  • Behaviour management (behaviourism)

It provides a framework for thinking for a wide range of professionals working with families with babies, children and young people. Containment and reciprocity can promote change in the quality of attachment to develop between babies and their carers.

Some professionals who have attended the Solihull Foundation Training may have the opportunity to attend a third day's training which will enable them to deliver a ten-week Solihull Approach Parenting Group.

The Solihull Approach Parenting Group

The groups are delivered over 10 weeks, two hours per week for face to face groups and 1 hour per week for virtual groups. We deliver universal as well as groups for parents/cares of children with SEND’. It aims to develop a framework of thinking about parent/child relationships, which can be developed into a lifelong skill. This in turn promotes behaviour management. Groups are being delivered virtually through Microsoft Teams while government restrictions are in place.

Although the parenting group isn't intended to be a therapy group, there's time for parents and carers to explore some of the emotional pressures they're under, some of which may relate to their child and some to the way they were parented themselves.

The parenting group aims to:

  • Promote understanding of children’s behaviour within the context of developmental issues
  • Promote the development of parent/child relationship
  • Increase confidence and self-esteem in both parents and children
  • Give parents a strategy for repair when things go wrong
  • Promote reflective, sensitive and effective parenting

Groups are aimed at parents of children and young people aged 0–18 years. Parents attend groups voluntarily. Groups are delivered by professionals across Shropshire actively working with and supporting families.