Steve Ames | Live Well Lamoille

How Families Stay Strong

Apr 02 2019

By: Steve Ames

Speaking to a legislator earlier this session, I came to realize that not everyone knows about the significant integrated approach to prevention the state and a large number of partner organizations take, sometimes called “upstream strategies,” to ensure kids and families succeed in life.

Data shows that focusing on prevention efforts has a significant impact on lowering costs down the road for other systems and services, including special education, health care and even corrections. Even more important, they help kids and their families lead healthier, happier lives.

While there are many different efforts aimed at prevention, from smoking cessation, Early Intervention, Strong Families Home Visiting, and Care Coordination to name just a few, my focus here is on a prevention framework that Vermont has committed to over many years that can be incorporated across many other prevention strategies – the tried and true Strengthening Families Framework.

Strengthening Families is a research-informed approach to increase family strengths (also sometimes referred to as “resilience”), enhance child development, and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. It is based on engaging families, programs, and communities in building five key protective factors – factors that help kids and families do better when difficult things happen to them (including Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs):

Parental resilience: Managing stress and functioning well when faced with challenges, adversity and trauma. We can all learn ways to manage the inevitable challenges that occur in our daily lives. Parent education classes offered through the Parent Child Centers (like the Lamoille Family Center) are just one strategy to help parents learn these skills.
Social connections: Positive relationships that provide emotional, informational, instrumental and spiritual support. Social connections include keeping in touch with family members, but also are as simple as going to community events and school events – or just talking to each other on the street and waving to each other as you pass by on the road.
Knowledge of parenting and child development: Understanding child development and parenting strategies that support physical, cognitive, language, social and emotional development. If you know that your three-year-old’s brain is not able to reason like your nine-year-old’s, then parenting will be a little bit easier – but there are myriad ways that knowledge of child development helps people to interact with kids in more positive ways.
Concrete support in times of need: Access to concrete support and services that address a family’s needs and help minimize stress caused by challenges. Concrete support can be help from a friend when your family is stressed, or help from a family member. It can also come from a Parent Child Center, church, or a state agency. It can be fundamental – like help with food or housing, or it can be more emotional, like help dealing with the fantastic new skills of your two-year-old.
Social and emotional competence of children: Family and child interactions that help children develop the ability to communicate clearly, recognize and regulate their emotions, and establish and maintain relationships. When kids learn the difference between thinking and feeling, they are more likely to communicate successfully and feel better. These key skills result in all of us getting the help we need.

Local Resources Available for Parents

In Vermont, the Child Development Division of the Agency of Human Services have been awarding annual grants for the past eight years to help child care providers learn about and incorporate the Strengthening Families Framework into their programs.

Parent Child Centers in every region of Vermont, like the Lamoille Family Center and the Family Center of Washington County, with whom I work, promote resilience and the protective factors every day at their centers, at the many playgroups they lead, during free parent education classes, and through the Children’s Integrated Services activities they provide for their communities.

Help Me Grow, Vermont’s Child Development call center (211), also provides support for people looking for solutions to challenges around being a family.

The five protective factors at the foundation of Strengthening Families also offer a framework for changes at the systems, policy and practice level – locally, statewide and nationally. Part of Building Bright Futures’ work includes creating and revising plans of action each regional council uses to inform and guide their work through the year, and the Strengthen Families Framework helps us identify key strategies in our communities.

At its heart, Strengthening Families is about how families and individuals find support, and are supported to build key protective factors that enable children to thrive. In most cases in our day-to-day lives, we find these five protective factors on our own. Sometimes we need a little more help – and Vermont is working through a collective impact approach to make sure that our variety of formal and informal services and supports for children and families are designed to make families strong.

As the Regional Coordinator for Building Bright Futures, Steve staffs The Lamoille Valley Building Bright Futures Regional Council, a volunteer committee focused on the well being of young children and their families. There is one such Council in each of twelve regions of the State. Steve also works with the Playroom in Morrisville. He writes about early childhood, families, community, play, and equity.

Improving Heart Health, One Step at a Time

Feb 09 2018

Keeping your heart healthy may seem like a big job, but even small changes in your daily habits can make a big difference. In fact, small changes are much easier to integrate into our lives than larger ones, so they’re more likely to become lasting habits.

In honor of American Heart Month, we asked our Live Well Lamoille bloggers to share one simple thing they do to keep their heart healthy. We hope this list provides inspiration for incorporating heart-healthy behaviors into your life.

Steve Ames: To be honest, I try to run up the stairs as often as possible, and skip elevators or so escalators whenever possible.

Mary L. Collins: I have begun a practice of going to sleep while listening to meditative music. It may seem an odd way to be heart healthy but for me, as I age, I find sleeping is one of the areas I can easily attenuate to be healthier. So, I listen to music that helps me fall asleep. It softly plays on my nightstand at a very, very low volume. I can barely hear it but it is just enough “there” so that I am soothed into sleep. Think of it as “Lullabies for Adults”. Works for me and is completely natural.

Rebecca Copans: Each week I try to take a brisk walk on five days and go to at least one yoga or other exercise class. I find that if I set a goal of trying to eat 5 different colors of fruit and vegetables each day it helps me to eat more fresh foods.

Rorie Dunphey: I take a 30-minute walk during my lunch hour.

Caleb Magoon: I love to drink a cold beer or two once in a while. But boy those calories add up! I have a simple rule I follow: Sweat before you drink. I allow myself the indulgence, but only on days when I am sure to get a little exercise.

Todd Thomas: I religiously check my Fitbit each day to ensure that I get my steps in. I have always been told that 10,000 steps a day makes for an active and healthy lifestyle. My personal goal is to get to 14,000 steps a day. I chose to walk to and from work (and to and from the house for my lunch-break) to help meet my daily goal. If I achieve that daily goal, that gets me to 100,000 steps per week. My body always feels great when I achieve 100,000 steps weekly!

Nancy Wagner: I love to snowshoe with my dog. She’s right there waiting and ready when I get home from work. I have a headlamp and we go out back in the woods.

Michele Whitmore: I exercise regularly and play tennis three times a week. Playing tennis has many health benefits including increasing aerobic capacities. lowering resting heart rate and blood pressure. Additionally, in 2016 there was a study done involving numerous exercises and sports that increase one’s lifespan, tennis was ranked in the top two. This research report also stated that playing a racquet sport, such as tennis, was linked to a 47% reduced risk of death. (More information here.)

Valerie Valcour: I do Tai Chi for 20-30 minutes five mornings a week. It helps ground me and gets my heart rate up just enough to get going.

What is one thing YOU do to be heart healthy? Let us know in the comments section below!

Help Me Grow – How to Find and Connect Families to Help

Jan 21 2018

By: Steve Ames

In my work as Building Bright Futures Regional Coordinator for the Lamoille Valley, I’ve been working to spread the word about Help Me Grow. Help Me Grow is the information and referral center for young families and kids that has recently been ramping up in Vermont.

A key component of Help Me grow is the call center. It’s part of the 211 System, and Child Development Specialists Elizabeth Gilman and Megan Fitzgerald are on the other end of the line (or text at 211*6).

The call center works closely with other agencies throughout the state. Though most calls come from families directly, sometimes they come from medical providers, or child care providers or family and friends. Calls run the gamut from “I missed my WIC appointment, do you know how late they’re open?” to wanting to have an in-depth discussion about a child’s development, or a request for potential help in the community for food or housing. There is significant value with the Help Me Grow system in that the calls can be anonymous, which lowers a caller’s fear, encourages them to really describe what they need, and allows trust to be built over time.

“The calls can be anonymous, which lowers a caller’s fear, encourages them to really describe what they need, and allows trust to be built over time.”

The Help Me Grow call center Child Development folks describe working with a mom with two children, one of whom receives special education services. The mom is a recent domestic violence survivor who had moved in with her family. The caller did not want to share information about herself or her kids on the first call, which was a request for help around food. She didn’t want to have to share her story repeatedly with service providers because she was concerned about being pitied or seen as not a good parent. The initial call with Help Me Grow was directed by the specialist to all the positive things the caller was doing as a parent – how involved she was in her child’s Individualized Education Plan, the positive relationships she had with her parents, identifying some basic needs in her area, and how she might access resources. The specialist spoke specifically about Reach Up and how it might build on the strengths and resiliency she already had to transition her back to work. On that first call, she was not interested in seeking state assistance. However, after several calls and follow-ups, she went to a local food shelf and had a very positive experience, and some time later went to the Economic Services office to sign up for help.

Often families don’t have built-in supports that the caller described above did. Elizabeth, one of the two Child Development specialists at Help Me Grow, has reached out to families referred from medical providers when the families are hesitant or don’t respond to calls from Children’s Integrated Services. Elizabeth often works with the medical provider and Children’s Integrated Services (CIS) to ensure that the referred family is getting connected. Often it can take several months for families to feel comfortable and safe enough to try accessing support services like CIS.

Help Me Grow is working on a more intentional partnership with CIS. Recently, a family was referred to Help Me Grow by a physician. The family has two young children, ages 2 and 4, and their doctor had developmental concerns about both. Elizabeth called the parent and they completed CIS referral together over the phone. Elizabeth got permission to share information with the medical provider, CIS, and school district from the caller. Then she worked together to pursue Early Intervention for the younger child and school-based services for the older child. Help Me Grow was able to make the referral to the school district directly so CIS staff could focus on the Early Intervention work for the younger child. Then Help Me Grow followed up with the physician to let them know that the connection had been made and that the kids had begun to get the supports their physician knew they needed.

Text the letters HMGVT (in the body of the message) to the (short) phone number 898211.

When providers refer families to Help Me Grow, they have to let the family know and get their permission for follow up. Help Me Grow never cold calls a family. The Help Me Grow referral form requires providers who complete it to confirm that they’ve talked to the referred family. The Help Me Grow referral form also lets a provider indicate if they’ve already made a referral directly to CIS as well, so that Help Me Grow can instead focus on connecting the family to wrap-around supports like playgroups, activities or basic needs, while they are going through the CIS referral process. There are some families who, even if referred to CIS, are hesitant to engage with anyone from the government, so having another option for engaging those families is critical. Help Me Grow is this option.

Understanding the depth of follow up through the call center is critical for community partners to understand. Help Me Grow is working to fill gaps and build connections over time with more difficult-to-reach families and eventually connect them to services. Those who resist getting help with their young children in need are difficult to find, and, when they don’t receive the help they need, problems often increase over time.

To make Help Me Grow even easier to connect with, the Child Development Specialists are available via text for families – folks can text the letters HMGVT (that’s what you send in the body of the message) to the shortcode (imagine this as a phone number) 898211.

Here is Help Me Grow’s super informative website. On it you can find the Referral form and lots of developmental information for young families as well as for providers of services:

http://helpmegrowvt.org

Here are two great smartphone apps, for both iPhones and for Android devices that are terrific ways to get more information about your child’s development:

http://www.joinvroom.org

https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/actearly/milestones-app.html

Help Me Grow

Jul 18 2017

By: Steve Ames

Here in the Lamoille Valley Region, we’ve been excited to assist with the rollout of the Help Me Grow call center and other components of the Help Me Grow project. Together with my council, the Maternal Child Health Team, and other partners, we’ve been spreading the word about the availability of anonymous early childhood support from the Vermont Department of Health.

Help Me Grow is a new part of the Vermont Department of Health’s effort to ensure all children in Vermont are screened for developmental delays and to ensure that all kids and young families have the resources they need to grow and thrive. It’s part of the State’s 2-1-1 information center.

Vermont 2-1-1 is the number to dial to find out about hundreds of important community resources, like emergency food and shelter, disability services, counseling, senior services, health care, child care, drug and alcohol programs, legal assistance, transportation agencies, educational and volunteer opportunities, and now early childhood development. It’s free and confidential for all callers to use.

There are many kids and families who would benefit from support, but who slip through the cracks. They don’t get the help that could benefit them during early childhood – when support is most effective.

Help Me Grow proactively addresses a family’s concerns about their child’s behavior and development by providing an early childhood specialist at the other end of an anonymous phone line (2-1-1 extension 6) and making connections when needed to existing community-based services and high quality parent education resources. For example, a young family looking for child care, a playgroup, or advice on how to handle a rambunctious two year old will find help and solutions with a call. By strengthening connections and providing resources for families in this way, Help Me Grow supports caregivers to promote their child’s social and emotional well-being.

When parents, caregivers or child care providers work with children, a screening tool helps kids learn and adapt very early in their lives, allowing them to develop appropriately and get the help they need, when they need it, early on.

The Help Me Grow project has added a Developmental Screening section to the State’s Immunization Registry so that a child’s physician can see results of a screen and review it without re-screening if the screen was conducted by a child care provider or educator. It’s a great example of making the system of supports more efficient and less duplicative.

Additionally, Help Me Grow now has two Child Development specialists at the 2-1-1 call center that can help anyone with child-related questions. Parents and caregivers can call 2-1-1 x6 anytime and get answers to challenging questions about their kids.

I’ve been psyched to help the Department of Health spread the word about Help Me Grow, and to help develop the website and various tools to measure how effective the 2-1-1 line is. In addition, at our Regional Council meetings, we’ve been sharing call center data to track the development of any gaps in the systems of support for kids and young families.

A team from the Vermont Department of Health and Building Bright Futures was fortunate to be able to attend the Help Me Grow National Conference as well, where we learned about successful aspects of implementation by regions and States from every corner of the Country.

One of the key components of Help Me Grow around the country and here in Vermont is the ability of the team to share anonymous call data with partners and others. For us in the Lamoille Valley, this data sharing allows the Regional Council to get a better sense of what young families are struggling with. We get quarterly reports from Help Me Grow about what areas of concerns folks are calling in about. That allows us to identify gaps in support and work with partners to address those gaps.

Each of these types of activities strengthens kids and families, and the fabric of support that we have all built for our neighbors and fellow citizens. It’s a wonderful time to be a kid in Vermont!

Building Bright Futures

Jan 24 2017

By: Steve Ames

Live Well Lamille - Building Bright Futures

It’s a great time to be a kid in Vermont! For the first time, this year, all 3-, 4-, and 5-year-olds who don’t attend kindergarten are entitled to ten hours of free preK a week for 35 weeks of the year. This year 7,300 kids took advantage of public preK at both schools and at qualified child cares!

At the same time, the Agency of Education began to use a revised measure to see how many kids are considered ready for Kindergarten. They found that over 80% of kids in kindergarten are ready! This is great news.

The percent of families living in poverty in Vermont has decreased as well. The outcomes for new moms and kids (Maternal Child Health) is measured as second in the country behind our neighbors in Massachusetts.

More Vermont kids are receiving the full series of recommended vaccines now than ever before – over 76% last year. The list of good news and positive indicators goes on, but there’s always work to do!

As we look ahead, there remain a couple of significant challenges to consider. First, with over 70% of children having both parents in the workforce, it’s critically important that Lamoille Valley kids have high quality child care options. That way, their parents, if they so choose, can work and contribute to our wellbeing and economic prosperity. This is particularly true for infant care – there are virtually no infant care spots in our county, and child care providers have long, long waiting lists for infants.

Additionally, there are troubling trends with the increase of children under age nine entering Department of Children and Families custody in our area, and throughout Vermont. We need to address the causes of this terrible outcome for kids and families.

Building Bright Futures just released their report detailing how young children are faring in the Lamoille Valley, and across the State. To find out more, visit http://buildingbrightfutures.org/initiatives/how-are-vermonts-young-children.

If you want to join the Building Bright Futures team that works to monitor and address challenges (and celebrate successes!) for young children and families, consider coming to a Regional Council meeting at the Playroom on the second Tuesday of the month from 3:30 till 5:30. Hope to see you there!

Early Childhood Development

Sep 06 2016

By: Steve Ames

early childhood

A young child, by age 4, has an extraordinary number of connections in his or her brain. Hundreds of trillions. In a baby, these connections are created as fast as 1,000 per second. These first four or five years are THE most important time in any person’s life. During this period their lighting-fast brain development either builds pathways for success, or not, depending on their experience.

Quality experiences for babies and toddlers mean stable and positive interactions with adults in their lives. Playing, talking, singing, reading – right from the very beginning.

Over the last couple of years working in early childhood, I have become more and more impressed with the importance of quality early experiences and how they contribute to healthy brain development for children. At the same time, it’s the extraordinary work by parents, child care providers and preK educators throughout the area that is helping to raise the most wonderful kids I’ve met yet!

In the Lamoille Valley more than 68% of kids have both parents in the workforce, so we really depend on child care providers – early educators – to help our kids to grow and flourish to their best potential. I’m lucky to work together with many of these folks to be sure that support is there for kids and their families, and many others who advocate for this critical part of childhood.

An especially wonderful resource for us has been the Lamoille Family Center, which runs playgroups, a child care center, and parent education classes, and provides support to children who can grow better with a little bit of help and coaching.

Defining Toxic Stress from a Community Perspective

Jun 21 2016

By: Scott Johnson

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The Lamoille Family Center and Building Bright Futures Council are partners with eight other communities across the country in the Early Childhood-Learning and Innovation Network of Communities (EC-LINC). EC-LINC is co-sponsored by the Center for the Study of Social Policy in Washington D.C. and the Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County. The mission is to support families and improve results for young children in communities across the country with a focus on accelerating the development of effective, integrated, local early childhood systems.

EC-LINC partners have long histories of building effective early childhood systems and share their perspectives and experiences to guide our work and solve common challenges together. EC-LINC works to:

Create a “community of communities” that fuels learning and innovation to tackle the toughest shared challenges and demonstrate results.
Build and disseminate knowledge about the range of community-based efforts across the country.
Develop opportunities for local leaders and state and federal policymakers to work together to accelerate strategies that improve results for children and families.

Over the past year, one of our collective efforts was a Learning Lab on community responses to toxic stress, resulting in this Policy Brief.

“Building on the widely used definition of toxic stress from the Harvard Center for the Developing Child, the [EC-LINC] Learning Lab has worked to define what toxic stress is, why it is of concern and how communities can respond.”

The next question for our community to answer is what we will do in Lamoille to ensure all of our children are healthy, nurtured, supported and free of abuse. Please feel free to share your ideas here, or contact Steve Ames or myself.

Scott Johnson: sjohnson@lamoillefamilycenter.org or 888-5229 Ext. 124

Steve Ames: SAmes@BuildingBrightFutures.org or 279-7558.

For more information about the EC-LINC, visit http://www.cssp.org/reform/early-childhood/early-childhood-linc.

Scott Johnson is Executive Director of the Lamoille Family Center and has worked in Lamoille Valley in human services and education for nearly his entire career. The Family Center has served our community by encouraging, educating and celebrating children, youth and families for forty years.

Scott writes about early care and education, adolescent development and strengthening families that improve conditions of well-being.

The Importance of Early Childhood

Apr 28 2016

By: Steve Ames

While running River Arts in 2007 – and in the middle of the renovation of the Lamoille Grange – now the River Arts Center – I had a chance to visit the Southeast State Correctional Facility in Windsor. The jail has a maximum-security section and a section for inmates with mental health issues. It was a profound day – I wish we all had a chance to do that. Then a couple weeks later, I heard Howard Dean talk about working early childhood education with pregnant and mothering teens in Harlem. It was like a light bulb moment for me as I realized that early childhood is the time to make progress in so many issues in our communities. It was after these experiences that I began to move River Arts programming more towards young kids, and with Kati Furs, started Open Gym and My First Camp…

Since then it has only become more clear how critical the first few years of our lives are in determining our health and well being for the rest of our lives. In fact, in the first three years of our lives, 80% of our brain development takes place. 700 synapses are created every second in a two year old! WOW. And the most significant way to foster great brain development in babies is for them to have stable positive relationships with the adults in their lives.

So I’m delighted these days to be working with Building Bright Futures and working with early childhood issues in the Lamoille Valley area and across the State – even a little at the national level. And, I’m looking forward to sharing our work with our community on this blog.

Steve Ames, Building Bright Futures

Apr 20 2016

Steve Ames As the Regional Coordinator for Building Bright Futures, Steve staffs The Lamoille Valley Building Bright Futures Regional Council, a volunteer committee focused on the well being of young children and their families. There is one such Council in each of twelve regions of the State. Steve also works with the Playroom in Morrisville.

Steve lives in Elmore and is the father of three kids ages 12, 15 and 21. He teaches skiing at the Stowe Mountain Resort and for many years, he ran River Arts.

He writes about early childhood, families, community, play, and equity.

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