Opportunities for parenting: Context, value and peer support

We describe a serried of linked Community-Based Participatory Research projects that we undertook with the goal of expanding parenting options and capabilities for women service users who have experienced homelessness and co-occurring disorders. The initial studies set out to (1) describe perspectives, experiences, and aspirations for parenting among mothers who have experienced homelessness and co-occurring disorders; and (2) identify how peers can develop supports for parenting in these marginal social circumstances. In the first project, a team with peer, provider, and research experience used conventional qualitative methods (in-depth interviews with mothers; focus groups with mothers, caregivers of the their children, and service providers), and documented how social contexts (shelters, housing programs, social networks and the wider institutional systems in which they are embedded) and life trajectories matter for women's potential for recovery and for the kinds of motherhood roles they desire and achieve. In the second phase, experienced peer advocates took the lead in studying how peers (mothers and fathers who have experienced homelessness and co-occurring disorders) can develop their own supports in having the lives they value. We describe current planning for a third phase, which will implement the peer parenting support curriculum across a variety of settings and will examine how this process can enhance recovery, family well-being and housing stability.