June 2010 Healthy Start Practice Network National Forum With support from the Department of Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs the Healthy Start National Forum brought together 65 professionals in child and family support on May 12 in Sydney. The conference was held to enable the Healthy Start Practice Network to shape future opportunities for building capacity in Australia to support parents with learning difficulties and their children.   The event used innovative methods to engage participants. Fifteen speakers presented their current work to a multi-disciplinary audience. All participants then came together as one group to identify new opportunities to enhance the lives of parents with learning difficulties and their children. From there, smaller working groups developed eight collaborative projects to be sustained beyond the forum.   An audio-visual record of the conference presentations and discussions will soon be available together with outcomes of ongoing collaborative project activity.   February 2010 Healthy Start Practice network reaches 2000 members!! Since the conception of Healthy Start in June 2005 we are thrilled to announce there are now over 2000 subscribers to the Healthy Start Practice Network.  To become a member complete the 'Join the Network' form on any page of the Healthy Start website.   January 2010 Therapy Focus Learning Hub’s Award Abigail Lewis, Therapy Focus Healthy Start Learning Hub Convenor, was recently presented with an excellence award for outstanding contributions to early childhood intervention in WA. The award was for her work promoting and developing Healthy Start in WA and for the work she does in Autism. Congratulations Abigail, very well deserved.   November 2009 Swedish Visitors  A group of Swedish researchers and practitioners who share an interest in parenting with learning difficulties recently visited Australia. The Swedes were interested in the work of Healthy Start and spent time with the national team discussing opportunities for collaboration on current and future projects. If you like to read more about their organisation click here.   September 2009 ABC TV discusses parents with intellectual disability (2009) ABC’s Stateline program recently highlighted issues facing families where a parent has intellectual disability, in a report that featured the work that Barkuma (South Australia) is doing to support these families. In the Stateline report Margaret Fischer, who is the Barkuma Healthy Start Learning Hub Convenor, talks about how Barkuma fights to keep families together. Click here to see a video of the ABC Stateline Report   August 2009 Supporting GPs to work with parents with learning difficulties The Healthy Start Team would like to congratulate the Eureka Learning Hub for having an article published on the website of the Ballarat and District Division of General Practice. The article describes communication strategies that GPs can use with parents with a learning difficulty at medical consultations. This Local Story and links to the actual article can be found in the Learning Hubs section of the website, which also features real life stories about the activities of other Healthy Start Learning Hubs.   If your Learning Hub would like to be profiled for a Local Story, please contact the Healthy Start Team to find out more.   August 2009 New Healthy Start ‘Research Reviews’ now available A new resource is now available via the Healthy Start website. The Website features a new collection of Research Reviews which summarise the major findings of important research articles about parenting with a learning difficulty. The Research Reviews will also include a discussion of what the findings mean for you, as a practitioner who supports parents. The are four Research Reviews now available in the Practice Points section of the Healthy Start website. Keep an eye on this webpage for more Research Reviews coming soon.