June 2003

Workshops benefit early parenting professionals

Jane Drummond, a Professor at the Faculty of Nursing at the University of Alberta, Canada, has been Visiting Scholar at the Queen Elizabeth Early Parenting Centre (QEC) where she has been holding workshops.

Dr Drummond, who has been at the QEC for three months, has been modelling, mentoring and coaching QEC staff in their day-to-day work with families—including the more vulnerable families whose children are at risk of abuse or neglect—in residential programs and in family homes in metropolitan Melbourne and rural Victoria.

She has also been working with the University of Melbourne School of Nursing, which has formal academic links with the University of Alberta.

Professor Drummond had been a nurse for more than 30 years.

Her practice centres on emphasising and enhancing the strengths of children and families.

She is the team leader of the Child and Family Resilience Research Program which is currently devising and testing approaches to enhance parenting with adolescent mothers.

It is also engaged with the community in investigating the effectiveness of home visiting as a method of primary health care delivery.