Developing an Australian-first recovery model for parents in Victorian mental health and family services.

“Let's Talk About Children” is an intervention that is applied by adult mental health clinicians to engage with and support parents who have a mental illness in relation to their families and children. Within the 2-3 session intervention the clinician assists the parent to chart the developmental progress of their children, monitor their wellbeing and to talk to their children about the illness and possible impacts on them and the family. The program provides training for clinicians to, talk to parents, who have a mental illness, about their children, discuss with parents the impact of the mental illness on the children and assist parents in supporting their children to better understand and cope with parental mental illness. The intervention is implemented in 3 sessions however with clinician and parent agreement this is reduced to 2 sessions based on their judgement that the 3rd session is not required. Sessions are implemented for 60 minutes once per week. Clinicians are trained in the intervention by completing 4 online modules (1 hour each) along with a follow up 4 hour face to face training session. The face-to-face clinician training is undertaken within 2 weeks of completing the online modules and the intervention is implemented with parents within 1 month. The face-to-face training is facilitated by a trained experienced clinician.