A programme manager at a parent mentoring project explains how she dealt with the situation.
I was managing parent mentoring sessions over 12 weeks for a woman with a 10-year-old child. There was a history of mental health and child protection issues in the family.
We were working to improve parenting skills such as communication, setting boundaries and age-appropriate routines, anger management, and encouraging positive discipline to avoid extreme physical punishments for the child - he had been hit across the head with a belt buckle in the past.
At an early stage in the relationship the mother presented us with paranoid thinking about her neighbours and people in the community generally persecuting her. She spent a lot of time talking about how people in her life had never believed her or supported her and how she resented this. We were aware that we were still trying to engage her in the mentoring, to bond with her and build up trust.
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