By Jenny Brown | Parent Hope Blog 

As 2025 comes to a close, I want to take a moment to reflect on the year at the Parent Hope Project, and to thank you for being part of this community.

This year has been one of clarifying and strengthening. Together with my fabulous part-time team, we’ve been focused on refining our programs, improving the online learning experience, and ensuring our resources genuinely support professionals to work more effectively with parents in the context of children’s wellbeing and mental health.

At the heart of our work continues to be the wisdom of Bowen family systems theory — with its focus on prioritizing our own work in our relationships, our emotional process, and the importance of thoughtful leadership under pressure. Drawing from this framework helps us stay grounded in complexity rather than reactive to it, and to support parents in ways that strengthen both children and the systems around them.

A central focus for me this year has been continuing to hold a both–and position — strengthening professional training while staying connected to what parents themselves need. This has shaped the development of our Confident Parenting Course and Manualized Clinical Intervention, as well as our webinars and learning communities, all designed to support thoughtful, relationship-based parent engagement. And valuable resources to share with parents in our podcasts and blogs—and listings to find professional support. 

We’ve expanded our resource library and deepened partnerships with schools, mental health services, and universities in Australia and internationally. These partnerships help ensure our work remains grounded in real-world contexts and responsive to the complexity professionals face when supporting families.

As we move into Christmas and the holiday period, I’m mindful that this season follows recent tragic events in Sydney that have been unsettling and hard to process. Times like these can heighten anxiety and pull us toward fear or polarised responses. My hope is that we can meet this moment with calm, compassion, and steadiness, drawing strength from connection rather than reactivity.

My ongoing commitment — and that of the Parent Hope Project team — is to continue developing approaches that support parents in staying engaged, thoughtful, and resourced, especially during a child or young person’s vulnerable time. This commitment has also been reflected in my own writing this year, and I’m very much looking forward to the publication of my new book, The Parenting Paradox, in the year ahead.

As we look ahead, I’m energised by the opportunities to expand our learning communities, introduce new training pathways, and continue strengthening the systems that support parents and professionals alike.

Thank you for the work you do with parents and families, and for allowing Parent Hope Project to be part of that work.

I wish you a peaceful Christmas and a restorative holiday season, with moments of hope, reflection, and grounded connection as we move into the year ahead.

Warm regards,
Dr Jenny Brown
On behalf of the Parent Hope Project team