Parents Forum
Location
In Parents Forum our mission is to foster honest, respectful and caring communications in families. We do this by helping parents and their allies develop emotional awareness both in workshops -- organized by community groups in schools and other settings -- and individually.
About You
Section 1: About You
First Name
Eve
Last Name
Sullivan
Website URL
Country
United States
Section 2: About Your Organization
Organization Name
Parents Forum
Organization Website
Organization Phone
617 - 253-7182
Organization Address
99 Bishop Allen Drive Cambridge MA 02139-3428
Organization Country
United States
Is your organization a
Non‐profit/NGO/citizen sector organization
Your idea
Name Your Project
Parents Forum
Country your work focuses on
United States
Describe Your Idea
In Parents Forum our mission is to foster honest, respectful and caring communications in families. We do this by helping parents and their allies develop emotional awareness both in workshops -- organized by community groups in schools and other settings -- and individually.
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 outside the context of treatment for ills affecting children, young people and vulnerable adults.
Parents Forum counters this stance by calling for an investment of resources in all adults in care-giving roles, especially parents. Simply stated: kids do better when parents get help.
The program's unique peer support approach focusing on emotional awareness has been appreciated and encouraged by many people and groups since the program's founding in 1992. With its handbook, Where the Heart Listens, available online (and thanks in part to the founder's extensive travel), Parents Forum has prospective partners around the world.
The simplicity and effectiveness of Parents Forum make it a prime candidate to be taken to scale --as primary prevention and as an adjunct to treatment-- in a variety of settings including schools, clinics, workplaces and correctional facilities. The Parents Forum program name, logo and materials are trademarked. The program's tagline: Come Share Your Strength captures the program's positive intent.
A recent Young Foundation (UK) article "Focus on Outcomes for Parents" describes the deep and wide-ranging positive results of the kind of investment Parents Forum advocates. Our focus on emotional awareness makes our program uniquely suited to being adopted as part of broader parent support activities.
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. The curriculum, based on eight questions, is outlined in the program handbook "Where the Heart Listens." It was published in print in 2001 and online, initially with a grant from Reed Elsevier Cares, in 2006. 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 handbook "Where the Heart Listens" and workshop experiences have had and will continue to have 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!
Each year the program serves from 100 to 200 people: parents and others who take part in the workshops in libraries, schools or colleges and incarcerated fathers who take our workshops in prison. Also, when individuals contact us for referrals to crisis programs, we call on our network of local contacts in peer support activities and professional counselors. Parents Forum workshops themselves in various formats: walk-up 15-minute mini-workshops as well as 1 to 2-hour presentations and all-day 'retreats,' are the core of the program and the most effective way to reach individuals.
Problem
Parenting is never easy but today's economic and social conditions, including the lure of 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.
Actions
Parenting is always a difficult endeavor but today's parents are under particular stress. Economic conditions and social conditions, including the lure of online activities that diminish attention to family life, are both important factors. 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 reported in February 2009, on Valentine’s Day ironically, 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.’
The success of initiatives such as Harlem Children's Zone in New York City and the Colombian Institute for Family Welfare (ICBF) in Latin America testify to the widespread need for parenting and family resource programs.
Results
Feedback from participants in our workshops is consistently favorable: presentations are very well received in settings as diverse as schools, libraries, workplaces and university parents' weekend seminars and over a wide socio-economic range. Most important, our program has been very successful with men, including men in prison. 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.
While have not yet engaged researchers to study our work, anecdotal evidence on the effectiveness of our work, is all favorable. A key element of future programming should be scientific study of our approach and how it works.
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: agencies to license our curriculum. These will be agencies that serve parents directly as well as those serving children. An example of the latter is the Boys and Girls Clubs of America; the program founder spoke with their national program director but for lack of time was not able to pursue the opportunity. We are presently seeking prospective local (Boston, Mass.) licensees in 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.
Please address each year separately, if possible.
2009-2010 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 four dedicated current board. Funding for staff, office and marketing are all urgently needed.
2010-2011 and 2011-2012 A strategic plan needs to be developed that will set 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 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?
Less than $50
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
In what country?
United States
Is your initiative connected to an established organization?
Yes
If yes, provide organization name.
Parents Forum (The initiative presented is the program.)
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 any non-monetary partnerships with NGOs?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with businesses?
Yes
Does your organization have any non-monetary partnerships with government?
No
Please tell us more about how these partnerships are critical to the success of your innovation.
Our mailing address has been provided by Cambridge Community Services where we had an office for five years. We closed our one-room office to save money and CCS will allow us to receive mail at their building through January 2010. 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.
What are the three most important actions needed to grow your initiative or organization?
Finding a strong leader or leaders, both volunteer and paid, to take the program forward
Inspiring a donor or donors to provide substantial funding
Creating effective marketing and developing program materials in all media (and in languages other than English)
The Story
What was the defining moment that led you 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, and 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.”
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.
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.
Eve is also involved with the Invest in Kids task group of the Partnership of America's Economic Success (www.partnershipforsuccess.org), and the NGO Committee on Mental Health at the U.N. in New York.
How did you first hear about Changemakers?
Through another organization or company
If through another, please provide the name of the organization or company
CIVICUS or email received from another organization
 | Naveen Shakir said: “Thanks for a great entry! Your initiative’s specific focus on parents of children with mental health issues as the organization’s main ... about this Competition Entry. - 756 days ago read more > |
| Elizabeth said: Hello, I am just relaying a comment for Parents Forum that came through the Changemakers pipeline and am posting on their behalf. "I ... about this Competition Entry. - 806 days ago read more > |
| Sarah Mintz updated this Competition Entry. - 835 days ago |
| Sarah Mintz updated this Competition Entry. - 835 days ago |
| skrelnick23 updated this Competition Entry. - 835 days ago |
| Thomas Matlack said: I certainly applaud the work of Parents Forum, for kids, moms and specially dads. I am particularly sensitive to this issue as a ... about this Competition Entry. - 841 days ago read more > |
| Eve Sullivan updated this Competition Entry. - 841 days ago |
| Eve Sullivan updated this Competition Entry. - 841 days ago |
| Eve Sullivan updated this Competition Entry. - 842 days ago |
| Eve Sullivan updated this Competition Entry. - 842 days ago |
Comments
The notion of using parents who have been trained to work with other parents is a particularly good idea. Parents who are experiencing difficulties with bringing up their children feel very vulnerable and risk feeling condemned by professionals who, no matter how skilled or highly trained they are, may come across as experts who themselves would never have the kind of problems the parents are experiencing. This can be discouraging for the parents. However, when those who are helping are themselves parents, the parents on the receiving end feel more as if they are sharing difficulties with peers or friends.
I would hope that the project will do all it can to include fathers as well as mothers, also step-parents or others in a parenting role. Erini Flouri and Ann Buchanan's 2001 ESRC research on the England National Child Development Study found that fathers were crucial to outcomes for children, boys and girls, and their involvement led to improved educational outcomes and better emotional health.(mail to:ann.buchanan@applied-social-studies.ac.uk)
Thank you for these two observations. We define Parents Forum as being parent peer support. Participants in our workshops comment favorably on the non-judgmental nature of the discussions. This must be modeled of course by the groups' facilitators.
It is a challenge, culturally, to engage fathers in parenting education activities but, as you write, this is key. The July 2009 issue of Pediatrics reported that 70% of adults who harm babies by shaking them are fathers and the article emphasized that educational program for new parents must include dads.
'Doing Better for Children,' a report released 9-1-09 by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, urges the U.S. to 'shift more public spending to its youngest children, under age six, to improve their health and educational performance.' But the report does not mention parenting services, which I see as a hallmark of family support in other developed nations. We have our work cut out for us! Changing the terms of the dialogue on child well-being to include parenting resources has to be the place to start.
I certainly applaud the work of Parents Forum, for kids, moms and specially dads. I am particularly sensitive to this issue as a formerly divorced dad facing spending time with two baby children on my own. I had to learn on the job! Thankfully those kids are now in high school, I have remarried and have four year old to practice on with my second wife.
The work of the Forum also supports what I am doing at THE GOOD MEN PROJECT, a foundation that hopes to spark a national conversation about manhood and supporting programs for at-risk boys. So much of what men talk about in our format is being a father and a son. It is at the very core of who we are as men. So we need help from organizations like Parents Forum all the more!
Speaking as one who has been there, I believe it is important to tell parents that caregiving for their elders, who are now living longer, especially in developed nations, due to improved medical care, must not distract their attention away from giving their own children the support they need to grow up and have happy lives. Parents Forum is well-positioned to share this wisdom with the "sandwich" generation: people who have children and dependent elders at the same time.
I do not say to reject the call to care for an elder. Caregiving can enrich the whole family's experience of family life, and enrich the experience of the changes of roles in caring for each other. It can model healthful caregiving to younger members of the family, which can benefit the caregiver when he or she may become a dependent elder. But with a word of wisdom, the caregiver may be able to see the need for balance, and for adapting the caregiving to allow enough energy also to effectively care for and protect his or her own children.
The Parents Forum provides a wonderful structure for allowing parents to help other parents through tough parenting challenges. Since so many parents can use help, providing a way that parents can help each other is a great concept.
In Seattle, there is a Changes Parent Support Network (http://www.cpsn.org/). There are several support groups where parents struggling with difficult teen behavior can get help. I've heard many parents rave about the importance of these support groups in changing their parenting behavior to better handle their teens.
I was involved with PARENTS FORUM about eight years ago, and I still use the communication skills I learned when working with the organization. Although not yet a parent myself, the workshops really helped me when dealing with my family, which can be difficult at times even as an adult because my parents are divorced. The organization is led by people who really care about families, and I think that they are poised to make a real difference in many communities. I would definitely continue going to workshops if I still lived in New England!
Hello, I am just relaying a comment for Parents Forum that came through the Changemakers pipeline and am posting on their behalf.
"I have got quite far in the Parents Forum handbook 'Where the Heart Listens' and am finding it very useful and interesting in its specificity and empathy. Your principles emphasize my recurring teaching point about the necessity for increased attention and attentiveness to children in our care. Congratulations for this generous contribution to the practice of caring for children". -Olatoun Williams, Sponsor A Child
[Sponsor A Child was created in 2003 and is focused on the relief of poverty, distress and sickness and the educational advancement of orphans and other children at risk in Nigeria. To advance our goals we train child caregivers in institutions. We are a UNICEF partner and child rights form the basis of our activities.]
“Thanks for a great entry! Your initiative’s specific focus on parents of children with mental health issues as the organization’s main focus is quite innovative. Would you mind providing more information on how you plan on measuring impact? Also, while you focus on emotional awareness, could you tell us more about this approach and how it’s unique?”
- Naveen Shakir, Ashoka’s Changemakers