Child Development | 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.

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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.

Building Resilience and Hope in Children and Youth

Jun 12 2018

By: Scott Johnson, Lamoille Family Center

In a 2017 article co-authored by Boston Pediatrician, Bob Sege, MD, PhD, et al., the authors highlight recently released data about fostering healthy childhood development by promoting positive experiences for children and families. The article recognizes that many families experience hardship and adversity, and they point to research about the importance of balancing those adversities and early life traumas with positive experiences that can grow hopefulness. The piece is called: Balancing Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) With HOPE* New Insights into the Role of Positive Experience on Child and Family Development, and the full article can be found at this website: https://www.cssp.org/publications/documents/Balancing-ACEs-with-HOPE-FINAL.pdf.

Assuring healthy outcomes for children is important and complicated work. Families, communities, schools, and workplaces all play a role in the support and development of healthy children. The Lamoille Family Center works across the Lamoille Valley region (Lamoille County plus the towns of Craftsbury, Greensboro, Hardwick, Stannard, and Woodbury), fostering hope and positive outcomes for children, youth, and families.

One way we build hope and support healthy lifestyles is through our “Send a Kid to Camp” program. Initiated as a celebration of the Family Center’s 40^th anniversary three years ago, this highly successful program supports local children who otherwise would not be able to afford a summer camp experience. International expert and researcher on childhood trauma, Michael Unger, PhD, believes that camps can play a critical and positive role in a child’s trajectory.

“Camps help children feel in control of their lives, and those experiences of self-efficacy can travel home as easily as a special art project they carry in their backpack. Children who experience themselves as competent will be better problem-solvers in new situations long after the smell of the campfire is forgotten.”

The Family Center works with local schools and sister agencies to identify children who want to go to camp but whose families cannot afford to send them. In the camp’s second year, we were able to send 45 kids – almost double the number of kids to camp from the inaugural year. This year we are on track to treat 59 kids to outdoor and other fun camp experiences.

Here’s what one mother said about her son’s first camp experience:

“He came home from camp grinning ear to ear! Though it will take many months for him to tell us all about camp, he did say, ‘I have SO many friends, him and him and him and her. I don’t know their names but they are my friends.’ As we drove away from Camp Thorpe he was waving and people were waving goodbye and telling him they’d see him next year. I never ever imagined there would be a camp for him.”

We look forward to hearing from more kids this year with their stories about their summer experiences. Building hope in children is the best part of our jobs, and we believe these are smart investments in our future.

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

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Tag - Child Development

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