Welcome to the course from Our Time’s CEO

Hello, and welcome to this course. My name is Dympna Cunnane, and I’m the CEO of Our Time charity. Our Time was set up to give voice to children and young people who have a parent with a mental illness. We’ve developed interventions to support these families, and I’m delighted to bring you the course in partnership with UCL. UCL is a top-ranked university in the UK for research in psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience. This is according to the UK Research Excellence Framework, 2014. In this course, you will learn more about the issue of parental mental illness, and the impact it has on an estimated 2.9 million children and young people in the UK.

What makes this course unique is that we will hear directly from some of these children and young people, in order to truly understand their experience and needs. You will explore and evaluate different strategies for supporting the young people, based on our unique approach. You will also learn how to identify this often-hidden group of children and young people, and understand their needs, based on what they say they need. Finally, you’ll explore methods for supporting young people to build resilience and coping strategies. At the end of the course, you will have the opportunity to apply all of your learning in a creative assignment, which will support your professional practise beyond the course. Thank you for signing up to the course.

And I hope you enjoy it.