Why No Support?

Parent Supports Disparities Face Our Families

PARENT SUPPORTS HAS EVERYTHING to do with our quality of family life and child rearing. If parents can access timely, affordable parent supports, families function better and children are healthier. If our access to stable parent supports is threatened, our families can be in serious trouble.

In a world of colliding crises, change and uncertainty, we require a robust parent supports system in every community. The key word is system, because scattered and disconnected public and private agencies, or individuals who offer various forms of parent supports, simply won’t get the job done. We must move beyond isolated programs to a well-connected and networked system of support. 

Every county has residents experiencing lack of parent supports and some have segments of the population reporting extreme difficulty accessing these vital services. In times of crisis like a pandemic, access to stable parent supports becomes even more critical. 

In the Center for Parent Supports@100% we seek to get to real-world solutions. We will guide you through all the steps needed to put ideas for addressing parent support disparities into action.

Why should accessing support be a challenge?

We asked what gets in the way of engaging with parent empowerment and education programming. The list is important to review and discuss. Some attitudes about parenting support, mostly on the less-than-supportive side, include:

• We expect parents to understand why children act the way they do
• We expect parents to know how to be effective parents
• We expect parents to fix themselves if they face challenges
• We think if parents need help they should just pay for it
• We think that if a single teen has a baby, then she made a bad choice and has to live with it
• Some think that it’s not the job of government to help struggling parents
• Some think the consequences of ACEs are unfortunate, but it’s not really their problem.

Why can’t parents connect with parent support programs?

We have learned from our survey of parents why challenges might exist. Here are a few.

• Lack of knowing what is available and the benefits of parent supports: Some parents are not aware of the variety of programs available and how they can enrich a family.
• Inability to access: The people who need it most are often unable to pay for it, or lack the wherewithal to fill out the paperwork. 
• Stigma: Some people think that good parents don’t need help even though every parent can benefit from support. A stigma may keep parents from reaching out for help.
• Lack of providers: In some areas, there are chronic shortages of parent support programs.

An urgent need

As for why parent support is needed, the answers are easy to identify. Without support, some parents may struggle and then adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) can occur. We know from child welfare data that most parents engaged with child protective services will be struggling with one or more of the following challenges: substance misuse, domestic violence and mental health challenges. Most parents have difficulty accessing help. Sometimes services don’t exist. Other times, parents are not aware of them or how to access them. To prevent ACEs and family trauma, each community requires a robust system of parents supports. To learn more about the impact of ACEs on children, students and parents, we recommend you read Anna, Age Eight: The data-driven prevention of childhood trauma and maltreatment. 

Fast forward to your reality today: With data from the 100% New Mexico Survey and other sources, you have a good idea about where the need for parent supports may exist in your county, and that’s why it’s difficult to access for both parents and all caregivers. While global, national and state data on parent supports are very interesting and instructive, the real data that informs your work are generated by your 100% New Mexico initiative work diving deep into local neighborhoods. That said, you may be surprised by your survey results and learn that a challenge is far bigger or smaller or more localized than you originally thought.

But wait, google says there are answers!

With literally millions of people reading articles on ending parent support disparities and thousands of foundations, governmental and non-governmental organizations focusing for decades on supporting parents, why is access to affordable parent supports still so prevalent across fifty states? Why might a single mom, showing signs of trauma, be sent home with a newborn without ensuring parent supports are in place? Why might a parent with involvement with child protective services not automatically be linked to quality parent supports? Why do parents working full time not have enough money for parent supports? Why do cities that do offer parent supports somehow miss designing bus routes that take parents to such vital services? In a pandemic, can we afford to have any parent without a way to access parent supports? 

We don’t mean to question our good-hearted leaders in political, academic and philanthropic circles, but there appears to be a complete disconnect between those who claim to have answers and the actual implementation of solutions to ensure 100% of our residents are able to access well-thought out parent supports? What are our morals, ethics and values that allow lack of parent supports shown to strengthen families and keep children safe from ACEs to exist amid so much abundance?

What kind of society would allow a policy of benign neglect to doom entire zip codes to lack of parent supports?  Why should our most vulnerable parents ever endure anxiety about raising a child? If we ever needed a public and private sector solution to parent supports disparities, this is the moment.

Truly, why are we all not asking in loud public forums, “What is the root cause of parent support disparities impacting our urban and rural communities in the US?”

Parent supports is what we call a “thriving service” (alongside our services for survival). In our 100% New Mexico initiative, we focus on ensuring parents supports across a county, serving all the communities within its borders. Simply put, problems related to parent support disparities can generally stand in the way of a safe childhood and high functioning, self-sufficient family. 

Our best bet for addressing a host of challenges related to parent support disparities is ensuring easy access to a quality, comprehensive support at an affordable price or with subsidies for our most vulnerable residents.