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Welcome to Mercer Street Friends Parent Education Services
The Mercer Street Friends Parent Education Services support and educate parents so that they will be able to recognize and respond to their children's physical and emotional needs in an appropriate and competent manner. Through home visitation, and center-based activities, participating families learn the skills and knowledge necessary to function as independent adults and to build a strong and loving family, in many cases breaking a cycle of abuse and neglect. Parents learn that they are their child's first and best teachers.
Program goals include strengthening effective parenting - as well as eliminating domestic violence and preventing child abuse or neglect - providing access to medical care - including full immunization, prenatal care and timely diagnostic services - and strengthening language development and literacy among families.
To volunteer, please call Phyllis Stoolmacher, director, at (609) 406-0503, or e-mail pstoolmacher@mercerstreetfriends.org. To contribute, please click on Donate Now or see Ways of Giving.
Parenting Education Programs in this domain include:
- Children's Futures-Healthy Families
- Healthy Families-TIP (TANF Initiative for Parents)
- Family Support and Reunification Program
- Children's Futures-Center-Based Activities
Children's Futures-Healthy Families does screening, assessment and enrollment of eligible and interested families residing in the City of Trenton, and is funded in part by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and by a Healthy Start grant from the city of Trenton. As with the Healthy Families-TIP program, Mercer Street Friends works with families in home visitation with the goals of increasing each family's skills at nurturing, literacy and awareness of developmental milestones in their children's lives. Mercer Street Friends is committed to ensuring that no woman gives birth in Trenton without having received prenatal care.
To help a family, Mercer Street Friends assembles an interdisciplinary parent support team: a licensed clinical social worker, an intake and assessment specialist and five family support workers. Some family support workers are themselves former clients who have undergone extensive training in our program. Through education and counseling, staff members guide parents through an affirmative, nonjudgmental child-rearing curriculum, which includes positive, loving role modeling.
During visits in the home, parents are introduced to a parenting curriculum that includes health and safety, normal and abnormal growth and development, and nonviolent discipline strategies. As needed, the parenting program may provide instruction and referrals for counseling to parents to help them resolve their individual issues or needs. Family support workers also refer clients to services within Mercer Street Friends and the greater community, including alcohol and drug counseling, subsidized child care, Job Readiness Services and Basic Skills and Literacy programs.
Healthy Families-TIP Program (TANF Initiative for Parents) is a home visiting program of Mercer Street Friends that works with pregnant/parenting women residing in the City of Trenton, (identified either prenatally or within fourteen days of giving birth), and any pregnant/parenting woman residing in Mercer County receiving TANF of GA (General Assistance) with a child under twelve months of age. Participants in this program will receive home visits from a Healthy Families certified parent educator. During these sessions the parent educator, through use of culturally sensitive curricula, shall provide information and the opportunity for "hands on" activities in areas such as health and safety, normal milestones of child growth and development, nurturing, non-violent parenting skills/strategies, and family wellness. The worker will also role model positive parent child interaction and provide linkages to community resources as appropriate for the family. By participating in this program, families will better be able to identify personal goals, experience fewer incidents of child abuse/neglect, greater stability, and be better able to balance work and parenting responsibilities.
Interested parents may contact the Program Supervisor, Sue Maloney at 609-278-6901 or e-mail her at smaloney@mercerstreetfriends.org.
Family Support and Reunification Program this program has three componets aimed at preventing out of home placement and enhancing the possibility of reunification for childen already in placement.
1) Individualized Family Support provides families with an opportunity to learn and practice effective "nurturing style" parenting skills.
2) Parent Support Group is a series of fifteen week, 90 minute sessions conducted by a licensed clinical social worker and a trained family support worker. Childcare and limited transportation are provided. Registration in advance is required. Topics include the following:
- Behavior, anger and stress management
- Importance of praise: for being and doing
- Developing family rules
- Nonviolent, effective discipline
- Meeting the needs of both parent and child
- Child development
- Communication styles
- Nurturing touch
- Identifying feelings
- Self-esteem and self-awareness
- The importance of empathy
- Parents as role models
More information about parenting, discipline and child development, as well as helpful links, may be found on the Children's Futures website, www.childrensfutures.org
3) Counseling focued upon assisting parents to identify and resolve problematic issues
While much of the growth and personal development that occurs among the mothers in this program is difficult to quantify, there are real and measurable benefits. Among these are:
- 100 percent of client children are fully immunized
- 100 percent of client children received routine developmental screenings
- 100 percent of participating families have a medical provider as well as medical insurance for the children.
- 100 percent of participating families are now reading to their children on a regular basis.
Children's Futures-Center-Based Activities is a community oriented service. We recognize that families face many obstacles. Our services are focused on building on strengths our families already have and offering additional support. We work in collaboration with people and organizations that offer comprehensive services designed to support children and parents in their development as a healthy family unit. Our program offers group activities for parents and children to enhance competency in family literacy, parenting skills anf family health in an effort to increase bonding and reduce the incidence of child abuse and neglect. Parents model how to nuture and communicate more effectively with their children. Psycho-educational groups enhance parenting skills, self-esteem and decrease social isolation. Additionally, the center provides free pregancy testing, health information and screeing. Our staff is trained to be flexible and responsive to each family's unique needs. To view our monthly group activities calendar please click on the link Children's Futures Community Events for May 2009 and join us in raising heathly, happy, children.
The Mercer Street Friends Parenting Education Programs measure its success in incremental steps on a very human level - a child who is appropriately disciplined in a nonviolent manner, a parent able to care for his or her child's health or educational needs, a parent who finds joy, and not just frustration, in the challenging and rewarding job of being a parent.
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