Now & Next is an award-winning online program for parents and carers to achieve positive learning and relationship outcomes for their child and the entire family.

Designed and facilitated by parents for parents, who have developmental concerns for their child, it guides you into action to create the progress you want for your child.

We all want our children to thrive, and you make the biggest difference as parents and carers. By building on our children’s strengths, we can help them to lead a good life. Now & Next is an award-winning program that makes that happen.

Now & Next is facilitated by trained parent peer workers with lived experience in raising a child with a disability or developmental delay. By learning through shared experience and connecting with other families, the program complements the therapists and professionals you work with, to deliver great outcomes.

Over eight online sessions, learn how to:

• Achieve more positive outcomes with less effort
• Create a vision, and build on your child and family’s strengths to make a big impact
• Increase family well-being and resilience
• Use strategies that have worked for other families
• Work better with professionals and other supports to achieve your goals

Parents describe the program

Parents describe what the Now and Next program meant for them. Some decide to train as Peer Workers and are now working to facilitate some of our workshops with parents and professionals.

Program Outcomes

• Parents empowering each other as peers and growing their informal supports and networks - our role is to assist families empower each other.

• Family leadership development and capacity building

• Families learn to formulate goals and the next steps to take goals to action

• Families experience crafting effective relationships with professionals to achieve goals for their children and themselves

• Participants learning transferable skills in the mental health and long term conditions and for different age groups

• Evidence-based and collecting data on a real time basis, during programs through a bespoke platform

How does Now and Next work?

Now and Next is a Peer Network and Family Leadership initiative for parents of young children with disabilities and delays in their development. This evidence-based 8-week group program runs globally.

The program is delivered by peer facilitators who receive training and leadership development to support their effective work with families.  

After graduating, you are invited into the network. This alumni group then continues to learn together through various technology-based mechanisms They inform, support and motivate each other to aim high and see new opportunities for their child now and in the future.

Our peer facilitators speak six languages. Participants of this network include a high rate of culturally diverse families and fathers attendance is between 30%-50%. 

At a glance

Now and Next was launched in 2015 at Plumtree, Marrickville, NSW by parents who sought to share their lived-experience as well as their professional expertise in the Health and Disability sector. With the benefit of hindsight, they asked: “What would the best intervention for professionals and parents to ensure a good life for our children and families?” They applied ethnography, positive psychology and family-centered design thinking to implement radically new solutions and harness previously untapped expertise and enthusiasm.

• The Now and Next program was co-designed over a year with the first 80 families who joined it

• To date, almost 1000 participants graduated from 104 programs, including 43 online ones

• Programs were carried out in 4 countries: Australia, Finland, New Zealand and Canada

• Families from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds (CALD) represent 48.5% of the participants

• Fathers’ engagement range between a quarter to half participants, depending on the activities organised

• Groups have been run in Vietnamese, Korean, Arabic and Chinese.

• Some organisations have embedded this methodology into their service design model.

• in 2020, a school version of Now and Next ran in 3 schools, with 103 parents, 80 students and 42 educators.