Hello, my name is Carrie and I am honoured to be joining the CHILD-BRIGHT Network team as its new Parent Mentor.
I have three beautiful daughters, ages four, seven and eleven years old. My middle daughter loves music and hugs. She also has global developmental delays and a seizure disorder with Todd’s paresis. My work with her every day is both challenging and infinitely rewarding. I am grateful to have this new position to support the amazing work that CHILD-BRIGHT is doing for children with brain-based developmental disabilities. The network’s different research projects span such a wide range of ages and stages—this excites me as this research will benefit and impact the future of our children.
I have both work and volunteer experience as a parent adviser. I sit on CHILD-BRIGHT’s BRIGHT Coaching Parent Advisory Committee, am the Chair of the Rehabilitation Centre for Children’s Parent Advisory Committee, have experience facilitating parent networking and information sessions, and have also served as a panelist at the Children’s Hospital Research Institute of Manitoba (CHRIM) Child Health Days, contributing to discussions on how academics doing research in university settings are assessed.
I also work as both a playwright and puppeteer in theatre for young audiences. I love this work and have used many of my dramatic skills in my work with my daughter with a developmental delay. I have also incorporated many of the strategies I have learned working with therapists and my daughter into my work as a puppeteer and playwright.
I will be transferring many of these skills to my new Parent Mentor position: listening carefully, re-telling a story and getting to know my audience. My goal is to help parent-partners be successful in their roles by keeping track of their needs, letting them know what resources are available to help them, and sharing strategies that have been shown to be successful. I will also be their link to the CHILD-BRIGHT Citizen Engagement Council, and will represent their interests on CHILD-BRIGHT’s Training Committee.
If you have questions, concerns or would like to share a story, please contact me at parent.mentor@child-bright.ca. I look forward to getting to know you!