QIC-EC Research Grant; Fostering Hope Oregon

“Children’s early development depends on the health and well-being of their parents. Yet the daily experiences of a significant number of young children are burdened by untreated mental health problems in their families, recurrent exposure to family violence, and the psychological fallout from living in a demoralized and violent neighborhood.” -“Neurons to Neighborhoods, The Science of Early Childhood Development” by the National Research Council Institute of Medicine

Vision Children thrive at home, at school and in the community. Families are challenged and supported to protect and nurture their children. Neighbors care about one another, and neighborhoods are safe places to raise children. Mission To build a neighborhood based family support system robust enough to reduce child maltreatment 50% by 2020.

QIC-EC’s Four Core Areas of Social Ecology Fostering Hope has Five main components 1. Primary Caregiver and Target Child (Individual Level) Our main focus in Fostering Hope is to strengthen the family where they live, beginning with their own strengths, and providing the help they need to raise their children well. One of our Components is Home Visiting with Wraparound Services, and another is Parent Education and Support.

QIC-EC’s Four Core Areas of Social Ecology Fostering Hope has Five main components 2. Social Support (Relational Level) We call one of our Components is Kith and Kin. We find healthy relatives who have lost touch with the child, and encourage life-long positive and supportive connections. We have another Component that involves Outreach. We are reaching out to the isolated families, and connect them with friends in their neighborhood.

QIC-EC’s Four Core Areas of Social Ecology Fostering Hope has Five main components 3. Community Connections (Community Level) Our Outreach Component also connects families with services and organizations in their neighborhood that they have been unable to encounter, and with the Health Care and Home Visitor with Wraparound Support services provide the help they need.

QIC-EC’s Four Core Areas of Social Ecology Fostering Hope has Five main components 4. Public Policy & Social Norms (Systems Level) In the USA, when the developers of the social service system designed it, they made 2 bad assumptions which they built it around: –Most people only need 1 kind of help. They designed a system around each separate social “disease.” –Not very many people would need help They discovered almost immediately that all people need help, and so were always operating in “Crisis Mode,” causing them to develop strict criteria, that screened people out, not in.

This created a social system made up of isolated silos. The Criteria for helping people should be: –1. You live in poverty. –2. You live in a poor neighborhood –3. You need help.

We shouldn’t have to wait until there is injury or incarceration to help someone. We need to break down the silos (open the doors) in a collaborative effort. We need Integrated Services

Fostering Hope has 25 partner agencies working together on our shared vision for three neighborhoods, with the hope of expanding our wave of compassion to many more.

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“This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being a force of nature instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy. I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no "brief candle" for me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.” -George Bernard Shaw