The future of our society depends on our ability to nurture and develop our children. We know that children thrive when surrounded by caring and supportive adults who provide rich opportunities to learn through play and experience. The first five years are especially important and within that the first year lays important foundations for the future.

However, as we all know that not all children have those opportunities and indeed the first year of life can be the most dangerous period when more children die of abuse and neglect (NSPCC, 2003) than at any other age. In addition we know that there are a group of very young children who are experiencing abuse, neglect and witnessing domestic violence. These experiences can damage children and prevent them achieving their individual potential.

Browning House contributes to a vision of our society where all children have a secure, safe childhood and are loved, valued and able to fulfill their potential.

Our contribution to achieving this vision is to work with babies and children to enable them to grow and develop as healthy individuals. This we seek to achieve through supporting and encouraging parents, carers and significant adults to develop the feelings, skills and knowledge necessary to nurture their children safely and enable them to fulfil their potential. This involves assessing the ability of parents, carers and significant adults to be able to care for children safely and to enable them to fulfill their potential.

The parents we work with are and have faced severe difficulties which might include a combination of history of poor care and parenting when they were young, mental health problems, domestic violence, learning disability, drug and alcohol issues. Most parents want to care for their children in spite of the difficulties they face and many are determined to resolve the issues which prevent proper care.

We often work with families where there is a conflict between the needs of the children and the ability of parents to resolve the personal problems they are addressing.

Browning House seeks to help parents, local authorities and the Family Courts make decisions within the child’s developmental timescales. Delay can be harmful to children, so our commitment is to work with parents not only to assess their ability to nurture their child but also give every chance with the timescales to develop the skills, knowledge, ability to protect and as well as the relationship with the child.

This work requires the development of new skills and services as we draw on the latest research and practice nationally and internationally.