A new website will give parents plenty of local resources and information for raising their children.
Cynthia Barnes, community awareness and co-location coordinator with Powell River Child and Youth Inter Services Management Team, called it “a manual for raising your child.”
“It’s targeted to families predominantly although it’s useful for professionals as well that work in the field of child, youth and family,” she said. “It gives professionals a chance to look at all the organizations that do that and to look at their mandates. It’s kind of like a link-loaded website.”
Barnes said the website was launched at the beginning of March as a project completed by the team. It is targeted to parents with children between zero and 19 years old.
Age groups make up three sections on the website’s homepage: zero to five years old; six to 12 years; and 13 to 19 years. Each section has information pertaining to that specific age group, said Barnes.
“For each group we have all kinds of resources that will help parents bring up their children like safety, daycare, education, recreation, things to do on a rainy day, how to be safe on the Internet, talking to children about sexuality, also resources for parents too, like how to be a healthy parent.”
Other information includes suicide and child help lines for troubled teens, sexual health, home or family problems, drugs and alcohol and post-secondary school. For younger children, there is information on bullying, fitness and nutrition and local recreation.
Easy to navigate and simply designed by a designer in the Comox Valley, Barnes said the website was the result she was looking for.
“When you look at websites, some of them are so ugly and there’s too much information. It’s not well organized. People have remarked [our website is] very clean which is what I wanted and also it’s user friendly. I’m hoping that other people looking at it will feel the same.”
Parents can click here to find the website.
