RAN FC&S meeting on Empowering parents to make their children more emotionally resilient, Rome 16-17 May 2023

The Families, Communities and Social Care (FC&S) Working Group brought together 30 practitioners on 16 and 17 May to explore how to empower parents to make their children more emotionally resilient to (among others) extremist influences. This meeting focused on: 1) exploring the role parents can have in making their children more emotionally resilient; 2) exploring how practitioners can empower parents in this regard; 3) discussing the challenges practitioners encounter; and 4) exchanging on inspiring practices in the EU to empower parents. Participants at this meeting were prevention and countering of violent extremism (P/CVE) practitioners supporting parents (individually and group-based), such as social and community workers. The key outcomes of this meeting are: practitioners can support parents in a positive way to help their children with difficult emotions and grievances and to play a positive role in their children’s lives. It is crucial that support for parents is available long-term.

For some parents, building emotional resilience can be challenging. They may not be available to do so for a myriad of reasons, may not have the awareness or knowledge about extremism and/or its breeding ground, or experience a high threshold for seeking support when they need it. For practitioners, their challenges relate to finding ways to reach parents who need support, to being aware of the entire family context or working with families in which the parents support extremism themselves.

Some key recommendations for dealing with these challenges are: work on your own as well as the parent’s emotional resilience first, have a positive and outreaching approach towards the parents, and give the parents a positive role to play in your programmes. Additionally, it can be helpful to empower parents by creating networks where parents can meet and connect for peer support.