The effectiveness of parent workshops in mental handicap service

Workshops designed to help parents teach their mentally handicapped children new skills and new habits were offered for 4 years as part of a wider service. This was the first time such a service had been available to any family within an area, population 250 000, and all families with mentally handicapped children under age 8 were invited to join the workshops. Workshops objectives were to teach parents skills in observation, selection and teaching of new skills and new behaviour, and to provide parents with confidence and support from other parents as well as professionals. workshops ran one evening/week for between 8 and 12 weeks, and nine workshops were held with a total of 40 families attending. Attendance was high and success was considerable with the problems tackled during the workshops. Nevertheless, the original objectives of the workshops were only fulfilled in part, as it is uncertain how much the methods taught during the workshop were applied to subsequent problems. The paper discusses the value of such workshops as a way of providing both practical help and support to families.