In the Appalachian region of Ohio where affiliate staff Christina Coulter serves, it seems like everyone knows someone who struggles with substance use.
“We’re all in it together,” she says, including the parent educators. “They all have their own personal stories.” This shared experience uniquely positions her staff to serve their community.
About 116 families participate in Parents as Teachers services through Washington County Family and Children First Council, the affiliate where Coulter serves. She assesses that substance use accounts for one of the primary reasons these families are first connected to services, considering factors downstream of the experience—children in CPS, children who were born addicted, and grandparents raising children.
“You can’t really grasp the magnitude of it unless you’re here,” Coulter says, and describes the substance issue as one intertwined with culture.
As home visitors work to equip families with what they need to move forward, laying a foundation of trust proves vital. Participants are sometimes skeptical or afraid to allow a parent educator into their lives, fearing, for example, that home visitors will report them to CPS.
“But I think that the way that the [Parents as Teachers] program is set up really allows us to kind of build a really good, trusting relationship with these families,” says Coulter.
She could tell story after story of families involved in home visiting services, but one transformation stands out.
When Parents as Teachers connected with this particular mother, she was newly clean and staying in a sober living home while a grandparent cared for her infant child. Parents as Teachers services began even before she was reunited with her child and continued as she began the reunification visits.
Coulter recalls challenging moments in the mother’s journey as she faced dejection and despair. “And then it was like month after month we saw this progression,” Coulter said. She wanted to learn everything she could, even before she had her child back again.
Now, this program graduate has a job, an apartment, and custody of her child. And behind her, she has a team of Parents as Teachers staff cheering her on, celebrating her story and the future she’s creating.
Journeys like this one – and futures like these – spark the fire for the HeART initiative, inspiring research and development to ensure that the families in Coulter’s region and around the world have the tools and support they need to move forward.
Thank you to the Elevance Health Foundation for the generous grant that makes this initiative possible.
