Parents are the most important people in shaping the healthy development of children, a positive home environment contributes to children's learning and a strong family builds children's resilience. But what makes a family strong? This presentation will explore the characteristics of strong families and how they can be recognised and supported by parents, early educators, professional service providers and policy makers.

Understanding what matters to families in the 21st century helps guide policy directions that lead to improved services and supports. Focusing on strengths and resilience in children and families, this speech will also offer insights on the needs and priorities of contemporary parents, drawing on more than 15 years of data from a range of parenting research and support initiatives including the Raising Children Network platform accessed by 150,000 parents daily, the Parenting Today in Victoria (2022) representative survey of 2600 Victorian parents, and research exploring factors influencing parent engagement and support.

The talk will also highlight information-seeking behaviours of parents—particularly in online environments— as well as key considerations on how we convey messages about parenting and implications for the service system and policy-makers. There will also be a special focus on the future and digital parenting support, to explore the question 'what does contemporary support for strong families look like in 5 years?'. Raising Children Network has developed a range of supports in this space including webinars, podcasts and the recent co-design of a mobile app for parents on social and emotional wellbeing in children.

Established as a consortium of the Murdoch Children's Research Institute and the Parenting Research Centre, Raising Children Network works with 400+ experts in infant, child and adolescent health and wellbeing, learning and development around Australia.

Although COVID-19 is primarily a physical disease, it has adverse effects beyond physical health. Impairment in the psychological, social and spiritual domains also takes place, which would further undermine family quality of life. Besides, families are much affected during the pandemic. Because of social distancing measures, people are “forced” to stay in the family, which would generate family conflicts particularly on the use of IT and space resources. Besides, different views of family members on preventive measures would also create family conflict. Furthermore, family financial hardship as a result of the pandemic such as “forced no-pay leave” also creates much stress for families. For policy-makers, how to deal with emerging issues generated by COVID-19 (e.g., digital divide, gender inequality, economic strain, and negative family maladjustment) and promote positive individual and family well-being are important questions to be considered.

To empower families to meet the challenges under COVID-19, macro policies have been devised in different societies, such as salary guarantee programs, financial subsidy programs, family-friendly and good workplace practices, and family support programs. While these policies are valuable, it is argued that building up family resilience can help to empower families. With reference to the Family Resilience Framework (Walsh, 2015, 2016), we propose that we should empower families through developing their capabilities in three domains. These include beliefs systems (meaning about adversity, hope, and transcendence and spirituality), structural and organizational patterns (flexibility, connectedness, economic and social resources), and communication processes (clear information, open emotional expression, and collaborative problem solving). Based on this framework, we are implementing a 3-year family resilience project supported by the Hong Kong Jockey Charities Trust. Research findings showed that family resilience protects families from the negative impact of COVID-19 stress on the well-being of family members.