Who is FF4F designed for?

Friendly Faces for Families (FF4F) is designed for families raising children with disability, additional care needs or complex medical conditions.

FF4F is a resource to support you, your child and your family to participate in your community and have fun and interesting experiences together as a family.

FF4F supports you as a parents to identify:

• HOW you feel about the friendliness of faces in your community and how welcoming the community is to families like yours.
• WHERE you and your family would like to, or need to visit in your community.
• WHICH barriers you can troubleshoot to enable your family’s participation in community activities.
• WHAT you would like to change to improve accessibility and feel more engaged with community activities.
• HOW you can lead your family’s involvement in community activities.
• WHEN you can drive the changes required to become involved in community activities.

Society is made up of many family units all joining together like a gigantic, diverse jigsaw. For families, attending local events, visiting local places and whole family participation in community activities, are all essential to what makes up our family identity, family wellbeing and making connections with others in society.

Families are the place where children learn social skills, how to navigate life outside of the home and what it means to be a full participating member of the community.

Parents like you create opportunities and provide the crucial support to transport and accompany your child to participate in the community, thereby building skills, confidence, motivation and expectation that communities and all they offer, are places for everyone with the right support.

All parents are learning about parenthood and how to be the parent their child/ren need every day! It’s not all just instinct. As parents, we look to build our own knowledge, ideas, skills and connections around our children and family so that everyone is okay.

Parents can learn about overcoming barriers to social and community participation from other parents raising a similar child in a relatable situation. This site brings you the wisdom of other families and the facts available to us as a result of research with families. The authorship team is made up of parents and occupational therapists.