Circle of Security Parenting is an internationally recognised, evidence-informed parenting program that supports parents and caregivers to understand and respond to their child's emotional and relational needs. COS-P draws on more than 60 years of attachment research to help caregivers understand the meaning behind children's behaviour, strengthen parent-child relationships, and build confidence in supporting emotional regulation, resilience, and wellbeing. Participants learn how children seek both connection and exploration, how to recognise and respond to their child's cues, and how their own experiences can influence parenting responses.

Through guided reflection and supportive discussion, caregivers develop greater confidence, self-awareness, and capacity to provide safe, attuned, and responsive care. Facilitated by Megan Heffernan, an experienced Paediatric Occupational Therapist with extensive experience in attachment, interpersonal neurobiology, developmental trauma, neurodevelopment, and infant-parent mental health, the program offers a warm, reflective, and affirming approach to parent capacity building.

By strengthening relationships between children and their primary caregivers, the program helps create the emotional security that supports children's participation, learning, development, and sense of belonging across home, preschool, and community environments.

Additional Information regarding COS-P can be found at https://www.circleofsecurityinternational.com/

Expected outcomes of this program:

• Strengthened partnerships between educators and families through shared understanding of children's emotional and relational needs.
• Increased family engagement and confidence in supporting children's social and emotional wellbeing.
• Greater continuity of responsive caregiving across home and preschool environments.
• Enhanced child emotional regulation, participation, wellbeing, and readines

This program is delivered over 8 sessions of 2 hours duration, at a frequency of 1x weekly, accompanied by video-facilitated content and reflection. Families will have access to additional activities to engage in personally, between facilitated group sessions if they choose to do so. The spacing of weekly allows sufficient time between sessions for families to observe themselves and their children, reflect on their existing discomforts and challenges, and to incorporate new learning and attunement to their child’s expression of early relational need.

In delivering this with families within an ECEC setting, follow-up and parallel support will be provided to ECEC educators in understanding the presence of attachment struggles within parent-child dyads (where full consent exists) as it is reflected in the child’s behavioural expression of developmental need, differences, and vulnerabilities observable with then ECEC setting, and to facilitate educator knowledge, capacity building and responsive practice as significant secondary attachment figures.

This program is delivered at $600 per session for a group of 12 parents (maximum) for services provided on-site.