Opening doors with 360 Communities Dakota Healthy Families ...

by Molly Perry
Special to Sun Thisweek

Amanda wants to be good mother to her son Kyle. However, she has struggled with a history of sexual, physical and emotional abuse, and her own mother is an alcoholic. She has self-esteem issues and, as a teenager, she was diagnosed with ADHD and mental illness. Without a solid role model in her life, developing good parenting skills has been elusive.

During Amanda?s pregnancy, the father of her child was imprisoned. When she gave birth to Kyle, a hospital parent visitor determined she was eligible for 360 Communities Dakota Healthy Families and referred her to the program. Amanda agreed to participate out of fear her child would be taken away.

In many ways, Amanda?s story is why programs like Healthy Families are critical. Healthy Families has done essential work to promote safe, healthy and nurturing homes for children and prepare them for kindergarten. Healthy Families home visitors use an early intervention and prevention-focused approach to teach parents how to provide early learning, to help build social and emotional intelligence in their children, to keep the children current on immunizations, and to help prepare them for a successful preschool screening.

A 2006 University of Minnesota study found that Healthy Families nearly pays for itself by avoiding cases of child neglect and abuse. The study also noted that ?long-term cost-avoidance is much greater, as early intervention programs like (Healthy Families) often head off long-term dependency on government programs such as welfare, special education and the criminal justice system.?

Art Rolnick, a senior fellow with the University of Minnesota Humphrey School of Public Affairs and a former director of research with the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, says early childhood development programs have an annual return on investment of up to 16 percent, beating stock portfolios and other forms of economic development. ?The return of investment in early childhood development is extraordinary, resulting in better-working public schools, more educated workers, and less crime,? Rolnick has said.

Amanda?s involvement with Healthy Families home visitor Sarah was only sporadic during the first few months. Her history of abuse made it difficult for her to trust people. She started drug and alcohol use at a young age and never finished school. Consequently, her self-esteem was low. Since Kyle was born, Amanda had been told by her mom, Kyle?s father, the police and even perfect strangers she was not a good mother. This criticism prompted her to act out of fear, and attempt to make changes like giving up drugs and starting anti-anxiety medication. However, none of the changes would stick.

Healthy Families?s curriculum is set up to affect sustainable change with clients and their children. It includes activities that focus on identifying and cultivating family values. Sarah worked with Amanda to lay out and examine her core values. Amanda wanted to be a good mother, stop using drugs and finish school. It was clear Amanda tried hard to achieve these things, but with little support and few life skills to draw from, she had so far been unsuccessful.

Sarah spent four years building a bond of trust with Amanda and working with her through the Healthy Families curriculum. And the program has paid huge dividends for both Amanda and Kyle.

?The supportive and consistent nature of our program and our strength-based approach has helped Amanda no longer act completely out of fear, but from the goals and values that she has for her family,? says Sarah, ?Amanda looks to me for support and I have been able to have some pretty honest and difficult discussions with her.?

According to Sarah, Amanda is now connected to Early Childhood Special Education and is more aware of other resources in the community. She is now married and belongs to a church community. In addition, she no longer uses drugs, alcohol and tobacco.

?She would like to go to therapy for herself in the future and knows that she can do it when she is ready,? says Sarah, ?I am excited because she feels hope. She actually believes me when I praise her and she believes she can live out her values for her family.?

Amanda graduated from the Healthy Families program in July with an open door of possibilities for herself and her son Kyle.

Molly Perry is 360 Communities Dakota Healthy Families supervisor. Names in the column have been changed to protect confidentiality. Columns reflect the opinion of the author.

Source: http://sunthisweek.com/2012/08/23/opening-doors-with-360-communities-dakota-healthy-families/

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