Background and Previous Efforts

The Parent Education Programme seeks to enhance the mental health literacy of parents and promote positive parenting, which will in turn foster better parent-child relationships, and eventually, the mental health of their children. The programme contents are based on positive psychology, backed by evidence-based research and theories, and will be tailored for secondary, primary and kindergarten levels to meet their relevant needs. At our previous thematic network programme “Wellbeing-First School” supported by the Quality Education Fund, we implemented parent seminars in kindergartens and produced a booklet with tips for parents with primary-aged children, to promote parent-child relationships and cultivate positive parenting models.

In 2021, the Education Bureau developed a parent education curriculum framework that covers four strands of areas, including understanding of child development, promotion of healthy, happy and balanced development of children, promotion of parents’ physical and psychological well-being and fostering home-school co-operation and communication. Our parent education programme has followed this model in course development and evaluation. The inputs of knowledge, skills and attitudes in these four areas help achieve enhanced parental competence and well-being.

Programmes that seek to improve parenting behaviours can have the potential to prevent mental health disorders in students.