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Welcome to Mercer Street Friends Parent Support Services
The Mercer Street Friends Parent Support Services Program supports and educates 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, 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.
Home Visiting Programs
Mercer Street Friends currently operates its home visiting programs out of two sites, serving a total of 300 Mercer County families. Healthy Families at 222 N. Hermitage Avenue in Trenton is a citywide program, funded in part by the New Jersey Department of Human Services.
Also operating at that site is the new Mercer County TIP Program (TANF Initiative for Parents). This initiative is designed to give expectant or new parents who are receiving TANF benefits the opportunity to get encouragement and support in the very difficult job of being a parent. We understand that a new baby can keep you very busy. The TIP program offers you the opportunity to attend center-based activities, take advantage of in-home services, or a combination of the two. You will be able to earn credit toward your TANF work activity at the same time.
Eligible parents can learn about the following:
- Healthy child development
- Good nutrition
- Available medical and child care services
- Employment services such as resume writing and interviewing
- Balancing work and raising a family
Children's Futures, at 1100 West State Street, serves the West Ward 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 program, Mercer Street Friends enrolls West Ward 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's West Ward without having received prenatal care.
To help a family, Mercer Street Friends assembles an interdisciplinary parent support team: a licensed clinical social worker, a registered pediatric nurse and eight 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. We operate a food pantry at our Parent-Child Center West at 1100 West State Street.
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.
The Mercer Street Friends Parent Support Services Program measures 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.
Parent Support Group
This a series of 15-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
Information about parenting, discipline and child development, as well as helpful links, may be found on the Children's Futures website, www.childrensfutures.org
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