Parents Forum - It Takes Two
The focus on mothers alone is a fatal flaw in maternal health programs. Critical to improvement of maternal health are social programming and social marketing for parenting programs that include fathers. These must be undertaken across the board, in all sectors of society and around the world.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Eve
Last Name
Sullivan
Website
Organization
Parents Forum
Country
United States
Are you an individual between the ages of 18 and 35 who would like to apply for a nine month Young Champions Program mentored by an Ashoka Fellow?
No
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Parents Forum
Organization Website
Organization Phone
617 - 253-7182
Organization Address
144 Pemberton Street, Cambridge MA 02140
Organization Country
United States
The information you provide here will be used to fill in any parts of your profile that have been left blank, such as interests, organization information, and website. No contact information will be made public. Please uncheck here if you do not want this to happen..
Your idea
Name Your Project
Parents Forum - It Takes Two
Country your work focuses on
United States
Describe Your Idea
The focus on mothers alone is a fatal flaw in maternal health programs. Critical to improvement of maternal health are social programming and social marketing for parenting programs that include fathers. These must be undertaken across the board, in all sectors of society and around the world.
Website URL
Innovation
What makes your idea unique?
We care for the young in order to maintain our families' and societies' vitality and assure a healthy, productive future. Focus on children's health and welfare, however, has led --in both the developed and the developing world-- to systemic neglect of parents' wellbeing.
Further, focus on maternal health at the expense of paternal health has led to neglect of fathers’ wellbeing. Fathers are hardly mentioned, except in a negative light (abandonment, abuse) in recent UNICEF publications, State of the World’s Children (November 2009) and Progress for Children (September 2009) marking the 20th anniversary of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Research on the way boys are raised tells us that they are, more often than girls, punished physically and punished more harshly. Is it any wonder, then, that the men they become are handicapped in establishing trusting, loving relationships? Fathers and mothers have different roles and both parents need to make changes – as do maternal health programs – if fathers are to assume, or reclaim, an effective role in fostering the health of the mothers of their children and in raising their children.
An informal, unscientific survey I conducted with fathers involved in their children’s care, confirms the findings of Hans Rosling in his ground-breaking lecture for Gapminder: “improvement of the world must be highly contextualized.” Fathers’ needs may be simple (exercise, employment) or complex (mental health or substance abuse treatment) but they are as diverse and as important as mothers’ needs. We neglect fathers at our peril.
Do you have a patent for this idea?
Yes
Impact
This Entry is about (Issues)
What impact have you had?
In workshops and one-on-one, Parents Forum creates a congenial, confidential, structured environment where parents share their experiences. In our 18-year history we have served from 1800 to 3600 people, about 100 to 200 people each year: parents and others who take part in our workshops in community settings (libraries, schools, colleges) and incarcerated fathers who sign up to take our programs in prison (there have been as many as five times as many sign up as these workshops can accommodate). Individuals call us for referrals to crisis programs and we use our network of local contacts in peer support activities and professional counselors in these cases.
Our workshops (walk-up 15-minute mini-workshops, one- to two-hour presentations and full-day 'retreats') are the core of the program and the most effective. The curriculum, based on eight questions, is outlined in "Where the Heart Listens," our program handbook, and the third edition is now (January 2010) available through Amazon. With a grant from Tech Foundation in Cambridge, Mass. (USA) Parents Forum re-launched the program website in June 2009 with fully interactive capabilities.
The program has a powerful impact on readers and participants, as these comments from community members, including incarcerated fathers, attest:
= The workshop gave me information I can use immediately, at home and everywhere!
= This is what’s missing in a lot of other parents’ programs.
= It offered new insights on things I ‘thought’ I knew.
= This program can be a solution. This program gives hope!
Problem
Parenting is never easy but today's economic and social conditions, including online activities that diminish attention to family life, cause parents exceptional stress. Family conflicts, isolation and inter-generational alienation, along with addictions and mental health issues, are at the core of current social distress and community dysfunction.
A U.S. National Research Council and Institute of Medicine panel, February 2009, reported that ‘mental illness, substance abuse and behavioral problems among children and young adults cost the United States $247 billion a year in treatment and lost productivity alone.’ Pediatrics, July 2009, reported that educational programs for new parents on the risks of shaking a baby fail to include fathers who are 70% of the perpetrators.
Harlem Children's Zone in New York City and the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF) in Latin America each show the success that can be achieved with parenting and family support programs that include fathers.
Actions
Parents Forum, an assets-based program that takes a positive, proactive, and preventive stance, has an 18-year history of success on a local scale and an international reach through our online presence.
Our challenge is to educate participants and communities at large about the effectiveness of parenting services and their critical importance for parents, grandparents - and other caregivers - and the wider community.
Parents Forum's innovative approach focuses on emotional awareness and conflict management. We call on community members and local agencies to create their own Parents Forum groups and organize peer support activities that can be transformative for individuals and families. Peer support has a long tradition of success in addressing widespread, persistent problems such as alcohol abuse and other addictions. Parents Forum applies this model in a new way that is affordable and accessible, practical and effective. We call for its inclusion in maternal health programming.
Results
Feedback from Parents Forum participants is consistently favorable: presentations are well received in settings as diverse as schools, libraries, workplaces and university parents' seminars and over a wide socio-economic range. Most important, our program has been very successful with men, including incarcerated men. The main aspect of conflict management that we address is negative personal and interpersonal emotional experience.
Our program offers simple but powerful conversational techniques to reduce individual tension and decrease conflict between people. Benefits of our approach include greater awareness of early warning signs for serious conditions - depression, suicidality, substance abuse, among others - and acceptance of the value of professional mental health treatment.
Individual anecdotal reports from fathers support our view that services for men benefit the women and children in their lives. If we continue to ignore men’s emotional needs we will continue to struggle, individually and collectively, to support women and children’s wellbeing.
What will it take for your project to be successful over the next three years? Please address each year separately, if possible.
We need to engage community partners to license our curriculum: agencies serving parents directly as well as those serving children such as Boys and Girls Clubs. We are presently seeking prospective local (Boston, Mass.) licensees in such clubs, public health agencies and schools.
Considering the four questions given in Nudge (by Thaler and Sunstein) on behavioral economics: Who uses? Who chooses? Who pays? Who profits -and- benefits? Parents Forum would answer: ONE: Parents use our service by attending our workshops. TWO: Community and agency leaders who convene parent groups decide individually or collaboratively to adopt Parents Forum. THREE: These agencies pay license fees for our curriculum and training. FOUR: With enough licensees paying a fee of $1000 per year to Parents Forum, our agency becomes financially sustainable, parents become more confident and competent and, finally, children and young people do better in school and life. All benefit.
Where the Heart Listens, our program handbook, self-published, is available through Amazon and other outlets. We believe that book sales, along with program license fees, will bring us revenue.
Please address each year separately, if possible.
2010-2011 Parents Forum is at a critical threshold, capable of making substantial progress towards realizing its potential but is limited in personnel and funding. The organization needs several additional board members to join the five dedicated current board. Funding for staff, office and marketing are all urgently needed.
2011-2012 and 2012-2013 Strategic, marketing and fundraisings plan need to be developed setting goals for the next years and beyond. The exercise of writing this Changemakers entry has allowed board and advisors to take a look back and a look ahead. We appreciate the opportunity of being considered in this competition and hope that the visibility it provides will bring the resources we need to be successful.
What would prevent your project from being a success?
Parents Forum needs staff and administrative resources to support the founder and board members in creating sustainable revenue streams. To allow the vision of Parents Forum to be realized long-term, an endowment should be a cornerstone of the program's organizational development, along with partnerships with like-minded organizations, such as the Boys and Girls Clubs, mentioned in the response to the question above.
Our effort is part of a larger picture, however, that includes all parenting programs. While the value of parenting services is generally accepted, two serious barriers exist to their becoming widely accepted and widely available. First is the misperception that participating in parenting programs is a sign of parents' or children's past failures and, with that, a valid but off-putting link between parenting education and prevention of imminent danger or future risk. Second is the financial devaluation of the programs themselves.
To break down those barriers, the founder has suggested these initiatives:
= Implement a consistent and wide-ranging social marketing campaign over five to ten years to create a positive perception of parenting services as essential for everyone raising children.
= Develop behavioral economics strategies through health care, insurance and tax policy to encourage parents to access resources and to pay the many excellent parents program providers for their expertise and time.
If Parents Forum obtains the resources it needs, within a context of broad support for all maternal health and parenting programs, we will be able to make a significant and long-lasting contribution toward improving community wellbeing.
How many people will your project serve annually?
101‐1000
What is the average monthly household income in your target community, in US Dollars?
Don't know
Does your project seek to have an impact on public policy?
Yes
Sustainability
What stage is your project in?
Operating for more than 5 years
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Parents Forum
How long has this organization been operating?
More than 5 years
Does your organization have a Board of Directors or an Advisory Board?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have a non-monetary partnerships with government?
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
The web development company Annkissam, whom we selected to work with us to launch our new site with Web 2.0 functionality, is hosting our site for free through May 2010. We benefit from pro bono legal services from an intellectual property law firm in Boston. Our involvement and collaboration with numerous community agencies are key to our continued growth and development.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
We are working towards obtaining funding to hire an executive director. This person will be expected to initiate a strategic planning process, develop and manage programs, design reporting schemes to support membership and licensing programs as well as coordinate grant-seeking and other efforts to gain support from individuals and corporate donors. We urgently need a strategic plan (this could include creating an endowment fund) that would include goals for numbers of members and volunteers, numbers of chapters (licensed sites), member, volunteer and donor engagement and a steady and diversified revenue stream.
= Finding a strong leader or leaders, both volunteer and paid, to take the program forward
= Promoting sales of our handbook, engaging community partners to license our curriculum and inspiring a donor or donors to provide substantial funding
= Creating and implementing effective marketing, fundraising and social media plans and developing program materials in all media and in languages other than English
A key element of future programming should be scientific study of our approach and how it works.
The Story
What was the defining moment that you led to this innovation?
The program grew out of serious family crises when the founder's sons were teenagers. From the lessons she learned, primarily the importance of fostering her own emotional awareness, with the help of Christine Bates and other parents, she created Parents Forum and wrote Where the Heart Listens, the program handbook. In the closing chapter of that book, she wrote:
“As our communities have become bigger, as our lives are too often invaded by news of violence if not directly by threat of violence or violence itself, and as commercialism encroaches further into our communities and our lives, we can maintain a positive vision. We can try to create loving and orderly homes. We can strive to be neighborly and tolerant. We can maintain an eagerness for new ideas. We can ‘live simply,’ as the expression goes, ‘so that others may simply live.’ I believe that we can and must do all of these things. I hope that Parents Forum will be a strong partner in the many personal, community and global efforts to do so.”
When maternal health programs are broadened to consider and address paternal health – and offer an array of parenting services to both mothers and fathers throughout the growth and development of children and young adults – our societies will become healthier across the board.
If we continue, systemically and systematically, to exclude boys, men and fathers from social services that focus on families, we will continue to suffer, individually and collectively, from the ills that limited, maternal-health-only programming strives unsuccessfully to address.
Tell us about the social innovator behind this idea.
Eve Sullivan, Parents Forum founder, trained as a language teacher and has spent the last 25 years as an editorial assistant for a theoretical physics journal at MIT. She excels at leveraging resources to provide excellent results for Parents Forum. She has been tireless in networking and collaborating to bring family and life successes to individuals on a personal level and to achieve broad community, regional and worldwide recognition for the program. She has three grown sons and has hosted and mentored many international students in her home over the past 20-plus years. As she recently became a grandmother for the first time and expects another grandchild in spring 2010, she is acutely aware of the importance of maternal health programs and is grateful for the medical and health-promotion services available to her sons and their families.
She serves on the boards of the National Parenting Education Network (USA) and the International Federation for Parent Education (IFPE/FIEP). Parents Forum belongs to CIVICUS World Alliance for Citizen Participation and, through IFPE/FIEP, she is involved in the Vienna International Committee of NGOs on the Family. She has been named as the official representative of FIEP to the United Nations Programme on the Family in New York.
Eve is also involved with the Invest in Kids task group of the Partnership of America's Economic Success (www. partnershipforsuccess. org), helping prepare a statement of principles in support of investment in early childhood care and education.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Personal contact at Changemakers
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
 | 121 weeks agoFaatemehzahraa Ahmadi said: I think you can benefit from these books: Baumrind, D. (1971).Current parents of paternal authority. Developmental Psychology ... about this Competition Entry. - read more > |
| 121 weeks agoEve Sullivan updated this Competition Entry. |
| 122 weeks agoEve Sullivan submitted this idea. |
