When families are supported, children are less likely to be at risk for child maltreatment and more likely to grow up happy and healthy. This chapter offers suggestions for engaging your community in supporting, strengthening, and promoting healthy families through the five protective factors. Working with others provides greater opportunities to identify strategies for ensuring that all parents in your community have the skills, supports, and resources they need to care for their children.

Service providers and others committed to improving the well-being of children and youth can take part in informing and motivating other concerned individuals, community groups, religious institutions, schools and universities, and the local media to help.

In this chapter, you will find tools to help you share your message about the importance of positive parenting and ways to support families in your community through:

• Talking points
• Community strategies
• Pitching story ideas to the media

Talking Points

Supporting families by ensuring parents have the knowledge, skills, and resources they need is an effective way to protect children from the risk of child abuse and neglect. The following talking points provide ideas for how to share this important message in your community.

These talking points can be used with community groups or the media. Each audience will have its own interests, questions, and needs, so tailor your presentation to fit the unique circumstances. Engage your audience by inviting them to contribute their own ideas about how to support families, and close your presentation by involving them in a call to action.

What do we know about protecting children?

• When a parent treats a child with respect, love, and understanding, it affects the child for a lifetime making it easier to develop and keep friendships, succeed in school and work, sustain a happy marriage, and parent effectively.
• Unfortunately, many factors can limit parents' ability to protect and nurture their children. These can put families at risk for abuse and neglect.
• Certain factors have been shown to serve as buffers against these risks, enhancing parents' coping skills and helping them to raise happy, healthy children, even under stress.
• On average, children raised in households headed by two parents in a healthy marriage fare better than children who grow up in other family structures.

What are the protective factors that promote healthy families?

The best thing our community can do to protect children is to support healthy families by promoting the following five protective factors:

Nurturing and attachment

Parents and caregivers who bond with and respond to the basic needs of their babies and young children lay the foundation for a positive and loving relationship. They also stimulate the growth of their child's brain and help their child learn how to interact in positive ways with others.

Ways we can promote parental nurturing and attachment:

• Sponsor a workshop on playing with infants and young children.
• Provide quiet, private places for mothers to breastfeed and tend to their babies' needs.
• Organize a weekend play group for dads.
• Recognize local businesses with family-friendly policies, such as flexible work schedules and maternity/paternity leave, that give parents time to bond with their children.

Knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development

Helping parents learn about normal infant, childhood, and teen development will help them understand what to anticipate as their children grow and develop, and what types of support and discipline may work best at each stage.

Ways we can enhance knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development:

• Suggest parents speak to their children's doctor about any concerns, frustrations, or questions regarding behavior or development.
• Ask your local school district or faith community to sponsor classes and support programs for new parents.
• Organize a parenting club to discuss parenting books, websites, and other resources.
• Educate childcare providers and teachers about key aspects of child development and the relationship between effective parenting and brain development.

Parental resilience

Parenting can be stressful, especially when parents are also managing work demands or unemployment, financial worries, illness, or difficulties with a spouse or others. Parents who have support and skills for managing stress will be better able to cope with day-to-day challenges.

Ways we can strengthen parental resilience:

• Organize a neighborhood group that will rotate cooking a meal or performing light housework for new parents and other families under stress.
• Start a neighborhood "work out" group, where families can exercise and have fun together.
• Teach a communication class for couples.
• Provide brochures and other resources for teachers and childcare providers to share with parents who are under significant stress.

Social connections

For most of us, family, friends, and neighbors form a network that provides social interaction, recreation, advice, and help. When parents have the opportunity to interact with, learn from, and seek the support of other adults, their children benefit.

Ways we can build social connections in our community:

• Sponsor multigenerational activities like picnics and street fairs that reflect the community's culture through music, food, and games. Involve parents in organizing these events.
• Help recruit volunteers for mentoring programs such as Big Brothers Big Sisters, Befriend-a-Child, or Family to Family.
• Provide venues for young families to meet and socialize, such as libraries, parks, and preschools.

Concrete supports for parents

When parents are not employed or face other challenges, they may need assistance in order to provide adequate food, clothing, housing, and medical care for their children. These supports may reduce the stress parents feel in difficult circumstances, giving them more energy to nurture and support their children.

Ways we can promote concrete supports:

• Provide information on how to access housing, health care, or employment assistance.
  Educate candidates and elected officials about issues in your community and the need for services and programs that support healthy and safe children and families.
• Encourage service providers to collaborate, leverage funding, and share resources to address specific needs.

Call to action: How can we work together to strengthen our community?

Anything you do to support kids and parents in your family and community helps reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect. This month and throughout the year, let's focus our attention on prevention efforts that support parents and create healthier communities for children.

• Which of the ideas we have talked about make sense for you?
• What can our community do? How can you help make that happen?

Community Strategies

Organizations, groups, and tribal communities all can help raise awareness, strengthen families, and protect children. The following ideas offer some starting points for planning local community awareness activities. While some of these are specific to Child Abuse Prevention Month, most can be used at any time of year.

Involve local faith communities

Faith communities are an important source of social support and can often connect members in need with concrete supports in the community. For example, houses of worship in Indiana sponsor a variety of events, including the Champions for Children Fun Fest featuring children's games, entertainment, and prizes. Visit the Prevent Child Abuse Indiana website: www.pcain.org

Other ideas for faith communities include:

• Organize a parenting fair to educate parents about support services in the community.
• Hold a Family Fun Day or Parent's Night Out.
• Host a parent education or self-help group.
• Provide a series of workshops on each of the protective factors and how they promote healthy families.
  
• Establish a resource library focusing on parenting issues.
• Create bulletin or newsletter inserts to highlight the five protective factors and suggest how members can promote them.

Involve men and fathers

Encourage fathers to be involved in their children's care right from the start. Here are some ideas:

• Encourage veteran dads to teach expectant fathers about newborns and how to nurture and care for their babies. For information about this type of program, visit Boot Camps for New Dads: www.bcnd.org
• Produce public service television and radio ads featuring fathers. The Alaska Children's Trust produced public service announcements with the tag line, "Listen, talk, play, and be a brain builder." Watch or listen to the ads: www.hss.state.ak.us/ocs/ChildrensTrust

Involve local schools

When parents become involved with their child's school, they develop social connections and learn more about their child's growth and development. Join schools in partnering with parents to foster protective factors that keep children safe and help them learn. For example:

• Hold a poster and essay contest for children in local schools. Find this and many other great ideas on the Prevent Child Abuse Illinois calendar of statewide events: www.preventchildabuseillinois.org/code/CAPM.html
• Sponsor an event with your school's parent-teacher group to introduce the protective factors and promote strengthening families.

Honor your community's culture

Parenting norms vary from culture to culture, so be sure your techniques for supporting families are relevant. For example:

• Offer classes that introduce traditional Native American child rearing practices as a means to help young Native American parents raise their children in a positive and culturally knowledgeable manner. For information about the South Puget Intertribal Planning Agency's Positive Indian Parenting Program, visit http://www.spipa.org
• Coordinate ethnic street fairs to offer families a way to enjoy their cultural heritage in the company of others. Community organizations can provide prevention information and educational materials at booths and through family-friendly activities like parent-child art workshops and puppet shows.

Involve community agencies

Many agencies have missions that are aligned with preventing child abuse and neglect, and even address some of the same family-strengthening protective factors. For example:

• Provide parenting workshops and one-on-one mentoring to parents with disabilities. Abused Deaf Women's Advocacy Services in Seattle, Washington, offers a parenting program designed to increase deaf parents' responsive social support network: www.adwas.org

Celebrate parent leaders in your community

National Parent Leadership Month provides the opportunity for parents, agencies, and communities to come together to celebrate and honor the work of exemplary parent leaders in November. A National Parent Leadership Month toolkit is available from Parents Anonymous® to help communities develop activities and events to celebrate parents who provide leadership in promoting healthy families: www.parentsanonymous.org/pahtml/NPLMonth.html

Additional Ideas

Many communities use variations of the following popular activities to recognize Child Abuse Prevention Month and focus attention on supporting families to prevent the risk of abuse. Make one of these ideas your own:

• Historically, the blue ribbon has been an important symbol in the effort to prevent child abuse and neglect. Many communities host blue ribbon campaigns during Child Abuse Prevention Month, encouraging community members to wear the ribbon and recognizing "blue ribbon neighborhoods," "blue ribbon kids," or "blue ribbon families" for extraordinary efforts.
• Host an awards breakfast or luncheon to recognize key individuals and organizations working to strengthen families and prevent the risk of child abuse. Give awards in five categories, one for each protective factor.
• Disseminate calendars of daily family strengthening activities. Use local children's artwork to illustrate them. For an example, see http://www.childwelfare.gov/preventing/promoting/parenting/calendar.cfm
• Sponsor a Kids' Day at the Zoo. Make posters or hand out brochures that show how animal families nurture and protect their babies and how human families do the same or similar things.
• Advertise the opportunity to make a contribution to the State trust fund to honor a father, mother, or someone else special to the donor.
• Offer a conference on positive parenting and strengthening families. Have five workshop "tracks," one for each protective factor.
• Develop a community campaign to promote positive parenting. Consider a "Promises for Parents" campaign, like the one promoted by Prevent Child Abuse New York: http://preventchildabuseny.org/pdf/capmonth06.pdf

Pitching Story Ideas to the Media

Media professionals want to know that their stories will have an impact on the entire community. When the topic of child abuse and neglect arises, their first question is often, "How many children have been abused in this State?" or "How many children have died this year from abuse?"

While these tragic numbers may garner momentary attention, they provide limited insight into the multiple dimensions of child maltreatment. They reveal little about the interactions among individuals, families, communities, and society that lead to such incidents. This complexity confounds our search for a simple answer to the question, "Why does child maltreatment occur?"

You can help the media understand that this same complexity offers great hope, because a problem with so many contributing factors offers multiple opportunities for intervention and change. The power of the story is in the healing that occurs when a community joins together, not only to identify and reduce known risk factors, but also to enhance protective factors that strengthen families, reduce the incidence of abuse and neglect, and protect children from its negative effects. The following are some tips for successful media pitches.

Anchor your story to a timely, local event

When you talk to the media about supporting parents and families to reduce the risk of child abuse and neglect, think about angles that make the story current and interesting to a local audience. This does not have to be a recent child tragedy; it could be a back-to-school story about how one elementary school supports neighborhood families, for example.

Have a clear message

Communicate the idea that the five protective factors have been shown through research to promote healthy families and reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect.
Other sample "bottom line" messages:

• Supporting families and ensuring that parents have the knowledge, skills, and resources they need are effective ways to protect children from the risk of child abuse and neglect.
• Children do well when their parents do well. And parents do best when they live in communities that actively support families. We can all play a positive part.

Focus on the five protective factors

Focus on successful ways your community is:

• Promoting nurturing and parent-child attachment
• Enhancing knowledge of parenting and of child and youth development
• Strengthening parental resilience to stress
• Building social connections
  
• Identifying concrete supports for parents

Keep your message simple and direct. You might even pick just one protective factor and describe how it helps keep children safe and communities healthy by making families strong. For example:

• Suggest a story on parental resilience, focusing on a young family that had to relocate after Hurricane Katrina. Have the parents meet the reporter at a healthy marriage class that helped them support one another as they coped with their move. Prepare them to talk about how improving their marriage helped them provide a less stressful environment for their children during a difficult time.
• Connect a reporter with an urban tribal organization that promotes social connections by giving lessons in Native American art and dance to children, while giving their parents a chance to meet members of their own and other tribes in an informal social setting.

Celebrate community heroes

Suggest interviewees who can demonstrate the success of family strengthening programs and protective factors through their own lives. Some suggestions:

• A young immigrant mother who participated in a visiting nurse program and learned new ways to nurture, connect with, and care for her baby from a provider who spoke her native language.
• An instructor who promotes resilience by combining a couples yoga class with tips on maintaining a healthy marriage.
• A doctor who created a package of parenting tips appropriate for different developmental stages.
• A church that offers Wednesday night social activities for families.
• A community organization that provides concrete supports by helping residents find safe, affordable housing to prevent homelessness and keep families together.

Always conclude media pitches with suggestions for where to go for more information or tips for how community members can participate in similar efforts.

Resources

For more on shaping a media message about strengthening families, see "Reframing Child Abuse and Neglect: A Practical Tool Kit," produced by Prevent Child Abuse America for the FRIENDS National Resource Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention:
www.friendsnrc.org/reframing/Index1.htm

For more on shaping messages to the media about parent leaders and strengthening families, see The Parent Networker®, produced by Parents Anonymous® Inc. This publication includes parents' stories and issues of importance to families:
http://www.parentsanonymous.org/pahtml/pubPubs.html