BC Council for Families

by Jennifer Dales

Mimi Hudson has a pretty good handle on what kids need to ensure their  healthy development.  As Director of Community Programs at Family Services of the North Shore, she's been coordinating the agency's family resource program since 1996, and has seen hundreds of families pass through the programs' doors.

  So what is the secret to optimal child development, according to Mimi?

"Parents are their children's first and most important teachers," she says. " It's the relationship between parents and children that has the biggest impact on children's development."

It's that insight, and the realization that parents' voices were going largely unheard in this province amidst all the debate and controversy over early child education, that  impelled the BC Association of Family Resource Programs to release a Social Innovation Discussion Paper earlier this year. Titled Early Intervention: An Early Parent / Child Development Framework for British Columbia, the paper points to clear evidence, from both social and economic viewpoints, that supporting parents to strengthen parent-child relationship pays off -- for children, and for society.

Mimi is also the President of the BC Association of Family Resource Programs, and was closely involved with both the development of the Social Innovation paper, and with the association's follow-up to the discussion paper, their proposed Implementation Plan for BC Parenting Centres.  Earlier this summer, we had a chance to talk with Mimi about what a system of Parenting Centres in BC could look like, about FRP-BC's position on supporting children and parents, and about the type of community supports that families most need to ensure their success.  You can listen in on that conversation -- it's the latest in our monthly podcast series Voices of Family.