A Guide for Families and Caregivers

All About Handle With Care

• Handle with Care is a simple interactive program to help parents and caregivers, including those who work in early childhood settings, to promote the mental health of young children from birth to 6 years.
• Handle with Care is based on a number of important assumptions about mental health:
  • Mental health, or social and emotional well-being, is a precious resource for all children.
  • Mental health is part of our overall health. It’s about:
    • How we feel, think, and behave
    • How we cope with the ups and downs of everyday life
    • How we feel about ourselves and our life
    • How we see ourselves and our future
    • How stress affects us
    • How we deal with negative things that happen in our life
    • Our self-esteem or confidence
  • Supporting children’s mental health is an everyday aspect of health care, just as we support healthy bodies by ensuring children eat well, exercise and get enough sleep.
• Handle with Care uses a strengths-based approach that assumes every parent and caregiver has problem-solving skills, potential resources, and wants what’s best for the children in their lives.
• Handle with Care is for anyone who cares for or works with children, including those in communities with particular risks or challenges. It recognizes the value of every parent, caregiver, and child.
• The program can be delivered in different ways
  • Group: Time limited, drop-in program (for example, in family resource programs, early years centres)
  • Individual: One-time only or ongoing individual support (for example, home visits by public health nurses, parent support workers, child protection, preschool resource programs, mental health promotion workers, foster parents support workers, developmental therapists)