Family life
Services for Families
The primary focus of the Family Life Coordinator is to serve our community through a proactive, preventative approach. This service includes educating families and agencies about ageism, healthy intergenerational relationships, isolation, and respite care. This provides tools for families and community members to identify, prevent, and respond appropriately to situations of family violence. The education component is key to prevention; this service also provides meaningful connections for residents in need and supports their mental wellbeing through temporary, supportive listening.
The Coordinator provides supported referrals to families in situations of conflict. Supporting and promoting organizations that provide services for families in conflict, combined with providing awareness and education, is a best practice in the prevention of family violence. This practice helps people identify when they are in need of support and where to find help before they are in crisis. This is an essential component for overall community mental wellbeing, as it keeps people connected and engaged with each other, community agencies and appropriate supports.
Prevention of things we don’t like talking about
This service provides education, confidential supportive listening, and referral for things like:
- Family stress
- Mistreatment of older adults
- Dementia caregiver support
No one is perfect, and no family is perfect. Conflict is not always a bad thing. Conflict can be an opportunity to change a situation and find support to make things better. The stresses of day-to-day life can get overwhelming, and sometimes you just need someone to temporarily talk to, so things don’t get worse; that’s the first step in prevention.
Charlene is Hinton's Rural Mental Health Project Animator! The design, implementation and evaluation of Rural Mental Health project is being done collaboratively through strategic partnerships to ground approaches to community mental health considering rural and individual community perspectives. The principles that guide our work include being community-driven, building on existing strengths, and using holistic approaches while considering the full lifespan of our communities.
Anchoring the project is the training of local Animators and the development of Action Plans through a community engagement process. Local community Animators in participating rural and remote communities are provided training and support.
We would love to share more with you about this initiative - to learn more about the project click here, and to view the latest Rural Mental Health Network Animator Newsletter click here!