Empowering diversity: Adapting the BUGK Parenting Program for multicultural parenting

‘Empowering diversity: Adapting the BUGK Parenting Program for multicultural parenting’ blog article was written by Jo Newbold, Senior Consultant, Parenting and Early Years Program at Australian Childhood Foundation, who interviewed Esther Mwathi, Bringing up Great Kids (BUGK) Facilitator.

Embracing and fostering inclusivity and understanding are key to the success of our Bringing up Great Kids (BUGK) Parenting Programs.

In a recent conversation, Jo Newbold, Senior Consultant for our Parenting and Early Years Program, sat down with Esther Mwathi from Tunza Community Solutions to discuss her work facilitating the BUGK Program for migrant families in Perth, Western Australia. Esther shared her innovative strategies for adapting the Program content to be accessible to and empowering for culturally and linguistically diverse participants

Tell us a little about your background

With a background in education, I came to Australia from Kenya around 20 years ago and worked as Assistant Coordinator of the Building Bridges program, bringing migrant parents together to gain support and share their parenting experiences. This spurred me on to work in the multicultural sector and I later got the chance to become a facilitator of relationship education in my job as CaLD Services Coordinator at Relationships Australian WA (RAWA). My role was to establish partnerships with CaLD communities and services, to tailor the workshops in RAWA’s education services to better meet the needs of migrant groups and to take these education programs out into CaLD communities. This was a natural process for me to think about interacting with migrant families in a learning group. I think it helps to have a personality that is open to learning. It’s about wanting to interact not for the sake of just passing on information but also to find out what parents are doing well and focus on that.

What led you to become a facilitator of BUGK?

In time RAWA decided to introduce BUGK workshops to their suite of programs. I hadn’t heard about BUGK; it was a new thing for me. Having completed the training, it was natural for me to think, “Okay, this is a new thing; why should my migrant cohort miss out on an evidence-based program being offered to the mainstream?”.

How did the idea of facilitating a BUGK parenting group for the Afghani Women’s group come about?

RAWA started a partnership with ISHAR Multicultural Women’s Health Centre as a way to increase RAWA’s reach in the CaLD sector. I formed a great working relationship with Sally Bower Manager of ISHAR Community Services, providing parenting workshops with the Neighbourhood Women’s Group. This group was anchored in skill-building opportunities such as sewing, with a suite of wellbeing programs embedded as one and a half hours of discussion sessions during group time. I regularly facilitated BUGK over five sessions during that time slot. The group mainly consisted of Afghani women who later received their own funding, and it followed that I continued to offer BUGK to them.

Why did you pick BUGK for this group?

I guess everyone has a different learning style; when I trained in BUGK, I can honestly say that on the day, I sort of struggled with the format of the program because there were the theoretical concepts plus the BUGK program manual. The Foundation BUGK Facilitator Trainer told us that BUGK had been decided upon as the best program to translate for Iranian families and I was thinking, “How am I going to roll this out?” I did some work after my training to work out how it all fitted together, and when I looked at the program again, I thought, wow, this is great, and the BUGK handouts are fantastic. I also came to value BUGK as a flexible and adaptable program and appreciate how it was going to be a great program for my cohort of migrant families. There are some very important and useful core learnings in this program. For example, there is nothing out there that uses the same understanding of children’s brain development to assist parents in supporting their children’s big feelings or to promote parent-child connection.

What adaptations did you make to the content and delivery of the program to meet the unique needs of Afghani mothers?

I asked the mothers what challenges they were facing. It was clear they wanted quick answers as they didn’t have a lot of time. It was clear that I had to focus on the practical aspects of BUGK. The mindfulness wouldn’t work for this group due to the focus and time required for the mindful exercises. Most of the mothers were constantly scanning to see how their children were, or there would be frequent interruptions that would call them away from our session. I really had to go with the flow for it to work within this flexible group space. I also learned that the limited time of parents’ engagement was not a reflection of their disinterest. parents wanted to know about these things.

The take-home messages were always one or two elements of each chapter:

• In chapter one, ‘The Message Centre,’ I focused on brain development and brought activities that got parents thinking. The Brain Bags and Wool Brain activities allowed discussion about how we can connect to our children and see how we are connecting neurons and growing children’s brains. Even with only 90 minutes available mothers went away from sessions saying, “Wow, I learned this today” and “I never knew this!” That is what I wanted as their facilitator.
• In chapter two, ‘Stop Pause Play’ was the focus for parents, and I had mothers telling me, “I think about that now, about how to stop and pause.” The ‘Rubbish Recycle and Reframe’ made sense to them when I asked, “What did your mother tell you?”
• In chapter three, I really highlighted how our children communicate with us through their body language. I provided the communication pie chart handout ‘Are we Missing Something’ and asked parents to share how much they communicate using words, tone of voice and body language. They went away from this session thinking about the emotion behind what their child was saying, not just listening and reacting to them.
• In chapter four, we focused on listening to a child’s big feelings, and parents wanted to know what to do when their child was feeling jealous and expressing this or when they were in the shops, and their child was having big emotions lying on the floor crying.
• In chapter five we focused on self-care. The mothers really needed that space and loved talking about what they were doing to look after themselves.

I shortened the six-week program into five sessions because of the time limits of the women’s group. I would usually have women who were at different levels of English acquisition in the groups. I used a PowerPoint with very simple English, and I didn’t use lots of dot points, so those who could read were able to read. If I had the use of an interpreter, I had the interpreter sit with the group of mothers who needed their assistance. I would find that it took longer for the discussion with the interpreter, whilst the English-speaking group completed their discussion more quickly. I would then have provided additional questions for the English speakers to keep them reflecting on the information together and sharing more deeply.

There is a lot of discussion and partnering within my facilitated groups. I would ask them to talk about what their mother taught them and invite them to partner up with another parent and talk to their partner about what is not working for them. In that way, the parents are all learning from each other and not just listening to me. When I become the focus, I believe I am not doing my job well. I feel that when parents experience being part of a peer learning environment, it gives them access to the full wisdom of the group. I am bringing some aspects of knowledge to them, but they have a great wisdom within themselves to share. Parents need space to share the good things they are doing for facilitators to acknowledge this.

What stories would you like to share about your experience of facilitating BUGK groups?

I had one parent say, “I saw my child watching TV, and I went and sat with them.” I then had the opportunity to say that’s good, acknowledge they were being mindful of their child’s feelings and encourage them to try doing that more often. ‘Stop Pause Play’ has been the big story that parents have been telling me all the time. I often heard them saying “Press the pause button”.

What strategies do you employ to ensure inclusivity and respect for families of diverse backgrounds?

The overarching focus for all my groups is everybody belongs, where all migrant families feel they are deserving of evidence-based programs. Inclusion and respect come from giving space for parents to express themselves in their own way. It’s important to go with the flow and not get derailed by the different ways in which parents express themselves, like sitting at the back and not joining discussions. In fact, sometimes the women who sat at the back looking distracted were often the ones who came to me afterwards and said they found it interesting and asked for more information. Inclusion and respect also come from tuning in to what is important for the group participants and not making it about us or that the program must run a certain way.

Learn more about the Bringing Up Great Kids (BUGK) Program

Bringing Up Great Kids (BUGK) is an integrated suite of activities and tools that are unique and offer all parents and carers a fresh way to understand and enact relationships with their children. It focuses on building positive and nurturing relationships between parents and their children, while also aiming to support parents to review and enhance their patterns of communication with their children to promote more respectful interactions and encourage the development of children’s positive self-identity.