ABOUT

Parents Plus is a community trust committed to developing educational materials for parents and children and to providing support to professionals working with children and families in the community. It was established as a registered charity under the auspices of the Mater Hospital in 2001 (Charity No. CHY 13664). All profits from sales of programmes and training are re-invested in developing new materials and sponsoring facilitator training.  

Parents Plus Key Values

1. Evidence-Based Service – committed to researching outcomes and developing effective programmes as well as encouraging facilitators to continually evaluate their practice to ensure their groups meet their families needs
2. Collaborative Practice – working closely with families to ensure the programmes meet their goals and to ensure their experience and knowledge is central to the content of the materials
3. Empowerment – the programmes are focused on encouraging children and parents to achieve their potential and the professional training is focused on encouraging professionals to achieve the highest standards of excellence

	Parents Plus People
	Dr John Sharry is co-founder  and Director of Parents Plus charity and co-developer of the three Parents Plus and Working Things Out programmes. He is Principal Social Worker at the Mater Hospital CAMHS and co leads a research group in TCD on mental health and technology. He has a special interest in solution-focused and strengths-based practice and has written several books in this area. For more details see www.solutiontalk.ie.
	Prof  Carol Fitzpatrick is co-founder and Trustee of Parents Plus charity and co-developer of the  Parents Plus Children’s,  Adolescents and Working Things Out programmes. Carol is the Professor of Child Psychiatry at University College Dublin and is a Consultant Child Psychiatrist at the Mater Hospital CAMHS and Children’s Hospital Temple Street. She has a particular interest in adolescent depression and in the development and evaluation of interventions for use in ‘real world’ settings.
	Grainne Hampson is a Senior Speech and Language Therapist, co-developer of the Parents Plus Early Years Programme and author of Parenting Preschoolers and Young Children. She also had a key role in the development of the manuals and parent handouts for all three Parents Plus programmes. She currently is responsible for the managing the Parents Plus Quality Protocol and Training Accreditation process.
	Mary Fanning  works with youngballymun’s Ready Steady Grow service as Coordinator of the Parent Child Psychological Support Programme since September 2009. Prior to that she worked for 19 years as Speech and Language Therapist Manager in the Mater Hospital’s Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service in north Dublin city and trained as a Marte Meo therapist in Dublin in 2003-4. As a child mental health clinician, she specialized in early intervention and prevention and she co-developed the Parents Plus Early Years programme (Sharry, Hampson & Fanning 2003), an award winning,evidence based intervention to promote early child development and support parent-child relationships. The focus of her current work is to implement quality interventions to support parent, infant and toddler well being in Ballymun.
	Eileen Brosnan is a Senior Social Worker at the Mater Hospital Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service. She worked for several years as a Researcher and Project Leader (School of Medicine, UCD) on the development and evaluation of the Working Things Out, Cognitive Behavioural Intervention for adolescents with depression and other mental health difficulties. She has also worked on various projects developing technology and multimedia programmes to enhance engagement in psychotherapy for children and adolescents.
	Breda Flood is the administrator of Parents Plus and has been instrumental in the development of the charity since its inception in 2001. Breda has extensive experience in accountancy and administration and is responsible for the day to day running of the charity

Parents Plus Trustees
The Trustees the Parents Plus Charity are Prof. Carol Fitzpatrick, Ms. Caroline Piggot and Sr. Margherita Rock, in the Mater hospital.