State honors Unsung Heroes at annual awards dinner

Shannon Love was one of 28 Unsung Heroes.

She was honored for her work to reform 

foster care in Washington state.

On a snowy and blustery Feb. 20 night, parents, grandparents, teachers and caregivers from around the state were honored at the annual Unsung Hero awards dinner.

Twenty-eight honorees were selected this year, one for each day in February, for Parent Recognition Month.

These inspiring individuals were selected by a parent panel and represent resilience in our state. They include a grandpa taking on custody of his young grandson, a school counselor who took in three siblings so they didn’t have to be split up, moms who are amazing advocates for their special needs kids and foster parents giving children a stable and loving home. Our focus was to honor heroes that utilize one or more of the Protective Factors:

• Parental Resilience: overcoming hard times and bouncing back
• Concrete Supports in Times of Need: knowing where to turn to for help
• Social and Emotional Competence of Children: knowing how to help children talk about feelings
• Social Connections: reaching out and knowing who can support you
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development: knowing where to go for information on parenting skills and children’s developmental growth

The night was filled with smiles, laughter and some tears as each honoree’s nomination was read for the group and awards were given by Director Heather Moss. If you would like to read all of the inspiring stories, please visit our partner in the Unsung Hero Campaign, Seattle’s Child Magazine.

Thank you again to everyone who sent in nominations and another round of big congratulations to our 2018 Unsung Heroes!

Washington’s Unsung Heroes to be honored in February

Parenting: one day it’s dance parties in the kitchen with hugs and kisses, and the next day you’re bribing with fruit snacks to stop the meltdown in aisle 3. Parenting is hard. And some paths are especially challenging for both the parent and the child.

This Unsung Hero was awarded during last year's ceremony.

Gov. Jay Inslee has proclaimed February as Parent Recognition Month, and we are celebrating extraordinary Washington parents with our Unsung Heroes Campaign. The Strengthening Families Team at DEL has had the privilege of hosting a recognition event now for several years and once again we find ourselves inspired by the stories from across the state.

Late last year we opened the nomination process up across the state and received nominations from all over. These nominees are parents, caregivers, teachers and community members who have made a remarkable difference in a child or children’s life. We looked for those who showed strength in the Protective Factors:

• Parental Resilience – overcoming hard times and bouncing back
• Concrete Supports in Times of Need – knowing where to turn to for help
• Social and Emotional Competence of Children – knowing how to help children talk about feelings
• Social Connections – reaching out and knowing who can support you
• Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development – knowing where to go for information on parenting skills and children’s developmental growth

Of the dozens of nominations received, our parent panel selected 28 honorees – one for each day of the month. We will again partner with Seattle’s Child Magazine, who will feature one honoree each day on their website. Be sure to check our Facebook and Twitter feeds to find out each day who the next honoree is. We hope you will find their stories as inspiring and uplifting as we did! And to all our honorees, congratulations!

Five Children's Books to Support Healthy Families

The research and information about ACES – Adverse Childhood Experiences – is critical in helping us better support children and families who have experienced trauma. But it’s even more critical to focus on what individuals and communities can actually do to help alleviate the negative effects of ACES. In Pierce County, our early learning coalition, Project Child Success, is using the Five Protective Factors as a framework for our efforts.

The Five Protective Factors are the foundation of the Strengthening Families Approach:

1. Parental resilience
2. Social connections
3. Concrete support in times of need
4. Knowledge of parenting and child development
5. Social and emotional competence of children.

Research studies show that when these Protective Factors are well established in a family, the likelihood of child abuse and neglect diminishes. They also build on a family’s strengths and place hardship in context.

We can support the protective factors in our communities and workplaces in large and small ways. One of the small ways the library is supporting them is using picture books to highlight each factor. Here are just a few to illustrate this idea:

Parental Resilience

Boats for Papa by Jessixa Bagley

Buckley misses his Papa and each day gathers driftwood to make a boat, attaching a note to it and sending it adrift to wherever Papa is now. Bagley effectively uses an animal family in this beautiful story of grief, resilience, and love.

Social Connections

Grandma’s Tiny House: A Counting Story by JaNay Brown-Wood

There are so many wonderful things about this book! It counts beyond 10, is filled with joy and connection, and a child is the one to solve the problem. Celebrating friends and family gatherings is a wonderful way to highlight the importance of social connections.

Concrete Support in Times of Need

Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Peña

Every Sunday, CJ and his Nana ride the bus to the same place. CJ complains, but Nana always seems to have a loving way to respond. This lovely book (A Newbury winner!) promotes a place that offers concrete support in times of need. But CJ’s Nana’s approach to life does the same.

Knowledge of Parenting and Child Development

The Boss Baby by Marla Frazee

This hilarious book illustrates all the exhaustion, efforts, and love that is required of all new parents. A must read for every new parent.

Social Emotional Competence of Children

Wild Feelings by David Milgrim

This funny book features many similes that English speakers use to describe feelings. It also delivers a comforting message about big feelings (with many laughs along the way).

Picture books are a creative way to approach difficult feelings, events, and challenges. They are one small way to promote the protective factors and offer gentle support for families. Your local librarian can help you find more wonderful books that your children and families will love.

Community Cafe

Have you heard about something called, Community Café, and wondered what the heck “it” is?  Here’s your primer. 

At its core, Community Café is a prescribed format for hosting large group discussions.  Based on the World Café Method, the Community Café is a smaller scale forum for group discussions that maintain the seven design principles of the World Café Method.  These seven principles lay out the “rules” for these constructed conversations:

1.       Set the context: for successful conversations, you must have a clear purpose and parameters to enable constructive discussions.

2.       Create hospitable space: you need to create a safe, comfortable and inviting space for open and honest conversations.

3.       Explore questions that matter: construct questions that are relevant and that will explore the objectives you wanted to achieve.

4.       Encourage everyone’s contribution: café conversations need full participation even if someone only feels comfortable listening to the conversation.  

5.       Connect diverse perspectives: mix up small group discussions with other groups to share differing perspectives and common themes.

6.       Listen together for patterns and insights: just as important to sharing your ideas it is equally as important to actively listen.  Make connections between ideas.

7.       Share collective discoveries: sometimes called “harvest” share small group conversations with the larger group to capture similar themes, patterns and insight.

Community Cafés are planned, led and monitored by individuals and community members who go through an orientation to learn the components of this approach.  They learn the World Café principles for hosting can relate to the participants and build on the assets of their neighborhood, group-building traditions, customs, visuals, foods and music from the cultures represented in each café to help to ensure cultural relevance.  Meaningful relationships develop as individuals and community partners participate as equals in a café series that sustains a value of reciprocity. 

The Community Café model has been used by Strengthening Families organizations to empower participants; many of which are parents.  Families are strengthened when communities support the building of social capital.  Reciprocity, or opportunities for families to contribute to their community, is essential to a supportive and healthy community; residents have the opportunity to contribute and a culture of reciprocity develops.  (www.cssp.org)

Strengthening Families organizations using the Community Café model construct conversations as they relate to the Strengthening Families Protective factor framework, published by the Center for the Study of Social Policy.  The five protective factors at the foundation of Strengthening Families are characteristics that have been shown to make positive outcomes more likely for young children and their families, and to reduce the likelihood of child abuse and neglect.   

The Community Café works well for Strengthening Families organizations because it builds on the foundation that parents and communities want to do right by their children.  The framework builds on individuals’ strengths and empowers participants to support each other and build stronger communities in the process.