02 May Pay It Forward: Be The Community Families Need to Succeed

One call can change a parent’s life forever. In fact, between July 2021 and June 2022, over 120,000 reports were made, most by telephone, to Child Protective Services (CPS) in Kentucky (Department of Community Based Services SFY 2022). 

What you may not know? Only around 6% were found to be substantiated child abuse or neglect.

Parenting is tough and no one can eliminate the stress that naturally comes with it. Parental resilience is defined as the ability to manage and overcome challenges that occur in every family’s life. While it is an individual skill, we have a collective responsibility to send a message to parents about their value and boost their battery of coping strategies.

As we move beyond April as Child Abuse Prevention Month, the Face It Movement continues to highlight that the community plays a key role in the health promotion of its parents – it is a necessary step in the reduction and elimination of both actual child maltreatment and the common everyday stressors that lead to a concern. This doesn’t require a problem-free utopia – a reasonable amount of struggle is healthy for growth. But parents, like muscles, cannot build resilience to strain if they face ongoing external burdens without opportunity for repair or hope for improvement in surrounding conditions.

Healthier parents mean healthier parenting. Research shows that enhanced parental mental health and well-being help to reduce caregiver depression, anxiety, anger, guilt, and stress. Supporting parents leads to statistically significant positive outcomes regarding family communication, parental involvement, positive parenting, child concentration, and child aggression. 

Strong parents paired with strong communities ensure families can thrive. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention lists vital community protective factors, including places with strong partnerships between the community and business, health care, government, and other sectors and where violence is not tolerated and accepted. On the most basic physiological level, it’s important for parents to have housing and transportation options and access to medical care. Opportunities for social connections and recreation can benefit those suffering with mental health and substance use disorders. 

Child welfare experience, even if it ends after just a few short questions during an impromptu open house viewing of their home, has a lasting impact on parents. Involvement with the system can seriously affect a parent’s sense of control they feel with what is happening in their life. It can lower their confidence in their parenting skills and cause a stigma of seeking help and receiving support. 

Due to public service announcements, most Kentuckians are aware that even with a mere suspicion, you can pick up the phone and make the call. Being in Kentucky, we’re all mandated reporters of child maltreatment. And by all means, if there is abuse occurring, report it. 

But, don’t take the easy way out if abuse is not occurring. Don’t assume it’s someone else’s problem to handle or the benefits of investigating outweigh the downsides in all situations. 

Kentucky communities must take action toward both community strengthening and getting proactive about child abuse and neglect prevention. In a renowned TED Talk, educator Rita Pierson spoke about how every kid needs an adult champion to help them believe in and realize their full potential. The power of relationship and connection does the same for parents as well. We don’t have to wait until a parent ends up on CPS’s radar to lend a helping hand.  

Communities are optimally positioned to support parents. Local businesses, organizations and services, and individuals know an area’s strengths but also what might be lacking. Fill a gap for a parent: 

• Host a low cost, or free, parents’ night out. 
• Sponsor youth sports so there can be scholarships. 
• On a more personal level, do some yard work for them. 
• Offer a prepared meal. 
• Or simply be willing to slow down, listen to a parent, and be there with them no matter what they are going through. 

Parents often face challenges before they have kids, and we could all benefit from some form of healing. But without a unified, two-generation approach, the cycles don’t end. Children need their parents and parents need communities that do not shift responsibility and turn away from them in their times of need. 

Be the community parents, and their families, need to succeed.

Think before you dial. For all the people who have helped that parent already, or all the missed opportunities to help that have passed over a parent, you get to decide if someone’s luck runs out with you, or a family’s fate is changed forever. 

Let’s mandate supporting parents. That’s the call. 

Photo courtesy of Dreamstime