Calling parents and carers of young people aged between 12 and 24!

Are you a parent or carer of a young person between the ages of 12 and 24? Yes? Then please consider helping us.

Regular visitors to our website or social media will be aware that in April we launched a major new part of our website: The Learning Zone builds on work we’ve created over the past decade, linking information on how the brain changes when a child becomes a teenager – and what role these changes play in family disputes – with tips and advice for families who want to know more about how to cope with arguments.

Our three main audiences are young people, parents and carers, and professionals and volunteers who work with families. If you look at our website you’ll see that while there is a Learning Zone for young people and another for professionals who work with families, there isn’t yet one for parents and carers.

Which is where you might be able to help us.

We didn’t create and launch a Learning Zone for parents and carers in April because we wanted to take more time to work on figuring out what parents and carers would like to know more about.

And that is why, today, we are asking any parent or carer of a young person between 12 and 24 if they would like to take part in a focus group this autumn to help us get a better idea of what would help this group handle family arguments better.

(Why 12 to 24 years of age, you might be asking? That’s’ because that time span is the period in which the brain develops from a child’s to an adult’s; yes, that’s right, the process doesn’t actually complete until you’re hitting your mid-twenties).

The focus group will be about two hours long (approximately). We will ask potential participants when the best time and place for them to take would be. We’ll also ask if they’d like to take part in-person or online; both options work for us.

The information we are looking for can be broadly grouped under two headings:

1) What information would you, as a parent, like to see in The Learning Zone?

2) How do you like to receive information? Video? Audio? Text? Something else?

We hope to run the focus group in September or October.

If you would like to take part in our focus group, please email sccr@cyrenians.scot.