This is a story of our community working together to support parents during an extremely challenging time – involvement with the child welfare system.

The Here4YOUth Initiative of Charles & Margery Barancik Foundation and Gulf Coast Community Foundation (Gulf Coast) awarded a $75,000 grant to launch a peer program for parents in the child welfare system.  A generous donor matched the contribution. The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) Sarasota and Manatee Counties, in collaboration with the Safe Children Coalition and other stakeholders saw this need and responded to it.

The Genesis

Gulf Coast learned from community stakeholders that there are families involved with the Safe Children Coalition who are in great need of support from a parent with lived experience who can assist them in their journey. Many of the parents are caring for youth with serious behavioral health needs.

Opportunities For All

NAMI began the Parents for Parents program (P4P) in Sarasota County on December 1, 2022. P4P offers peer mentoring for families in the dependency court system, connecting parents who have successfully navigated the system to parents who recently became engaged with Child Protection Services. Program staff for P4P include a program coordinator (Blake Neathery) and parent partner coordinator (Sonya Johnson), who both have lived experience of trauma in their personal lives. Sarah Miller is the P4P program supervisor who researched parent partner programs, along with Nathan Scott from Florida Department of Health, and implemented this program locally within Sarasota County. P4P offers parents navigating the child welfare system true empathy and support from a parent partner (peer mentor) who has been in their shoes. P4P promotes the safe and supportive reunification of children with their parents, or an alternative permanency outcome when reunification is not viable. The program provides parents with information, support, and hope during one of the most challenging times in their life. This outreach helps shift parental attitudes from anger to acknowledgment and acceptance. 

Outcomes Thus Far

Since December 2022, 67 parents whose children were legally removed have opted to participate with P4P; 22 Dependency 101 classes have been completed (a one-time, two-hour class where the parent is taught how to get through the system successfully); and over 200 individual mentoring sessions with parents have been accomplished.

Digging Deeper

We sat down with Florida Department of Health’s Child & Family Well-Being System Coordinator Nathan Scott, who has been in the field for over 15 years and worked with NAMI to research and develop the P4P program.

Q: Why did you focus on this program, P4P?

Scott: “Sarah Miller, with NAMI Sarasota and Manatee Counties, and I researched multiple programs across the country and what really spoke to us about P4P is that it is a promising practice. The outcomes they’ve seen in Washington State spoke to us as outcomes we want to see here. We want to bring parents to the table and find the best way to engage with them. That includes increased participation and visitation with their children, increased court hearing attendance and participation, increased rates of reunification, increased belief that the parent has some control over their case outcome, and increased trust in the child welfare system.”

What is the need for the program?

Scott: “Increased visitation is directly correlated to higher rates of reunification. Increased trust in the child welfare system was something we really wanted to cultivate locally. There is a lack of trust in the system itself, so what better way to cultivate trust than with a parent who has been through this, working side-by-side with a parent with lived experience. The hope is that they trust their peer mentors. We are seeing a self-reported increase in these parents in hope, self-esteem, feeling heard, and feeling respected. We are also seeing fairly unexpected, yet impactful systems change. Thanks to the P4P program and our friends at NAMI, this gives me hope that other parents can see it is possible and make the transformation.”

We also sat down with Parent Partner Coordinator Sonya Johnson who works for NAMI in the P4P program as the parent peer with lived experience.

Q: How does the Here4YOUth grant you received help you to impact lives?

Johnson: “I think that without this grant, we would not have this program. I can tell you that the parents I have worked with, regardless of the outcome, tell me we supported them in their darkest moments and let them know they are not alone, that reunification is possible, we all make mistakes, and we are all human. I want to especially thank Judge Andrea McHugh for introducing our team to the parents in the courtroom. We go to hearings to support the parents.”

Q: What do you hope to see going forward for child welfare in our community?

Johnson: “With the collaboration of parents with lived experience and Safe Children Coalition, we are seeing case managers changing their perspective on parents, empowering and believing in parents, trauma-informed language being used, and the system supporting parents as a whole in a more impactful way.”

Q: Could you share a story of success?

Johnson: “We have a set of parents who we met at their initial advisory hearing which is the first thing that happens when there’s a termination of parental rights. When we shared our stories and believed in them, they started engaging and they have now officially completed their case plan. We are also working with a parent on getting their rights reinstated after having a termination of parental rights. If favorable, this would be the first time in the state that this has ever happened.”

If you’re a parent in need of P4P, please click here to learn more about the program. Gulf Coast is honored to support this impactful, life changing program.