Responding to reports of serious problems caused in family life by repeated deployments, the Department of Defense has expanded a Missouri early childhood program to a dozen military installations and could expand it much further.
Larry Goforth, the director of special services in the Waynesville R-VI School District, told board members during their August meeting that Waynesville served 597 children in the 2006-07 school year through the Parents as Teachers program, of whom 429 were military and 168 were civilian children. By the 2007-08 school year, that increased to 800 children, 587 of whom were military, through the Parents as Teachers program and its specialized military companion program, Heroes at Home.
“We are looking for another great year here, Goforth said. “We’ve had a fairly significant jump with what we can do with our servicemembers.”
Goforth said Fort Leonard Wood has extensively promoted both programs through its Child and Youth Services staff members, and introduced Amanda McCormick and Tanisha Smith, both of whom are military spouses working as parent educators in the Heroes at Home program paid by the Department of Defense but come under the supervision of the Waynesville R-VI School District.
“With both of us being military spouses, this is a program that we’re very passionate about,” McCormick said.
There’s a definite need in the military community for additional support, she said.
“Back several years ago, the Department of Defense as well as some child development specialists realized some of the extra demands that are placed on military families, some of them being that with frequent relocations often young children see multiple doctors in a short period of time and sometimes developmental issues and concerns can be very easily overlooked during that time,” McCormick said. “Most military families are not lucky enough to necessarily be stationed near close family members, so they don’t often have a lot of that support that a lot of other civilian families are able to draw upon as they are raising their young children.”
Some of that movement is unavailable for active duty military families, but McCormick said with many deployments and relocations due to the current War on Terror, families of young children are becoming concerned that children aren’t bonding and forming attachments with parents who spend many months away from home on deployments.
The Heroes at Home program takes the pre-existing Parents as Teachers program, which uses trained parents to help mentor families of new parents and teach them parenting skills as well as identify programs, and modifies it to apply to specific stresses of the military lifestyle.
The military lifestyle affects more people than just those on active duty, she said, and the program is open to military personnel in any branch of service, as well as those in the National Guard, reserve components, and Department of Defense civilians.
Locally, the Heroes at Home program works closely with the Child and Youth Services personnel at Fort Leonard Wood, she said. That’s especially important in modifying a core part of the Heroes at Home program, which expects an in-home visit at least once per month between the parent-educator and the participating family.
That created problems for military personnel, McCormick said, who didn’t want to give up scarce home time but were quite willing to meet with parent educators at the on-post day care center where their children were attending.
“Monthly home visits might not quite work because until they got home at the end of the evening they didn’t necessarily want to rush through their evening visit,” McCormick said.
Parent educators in the Heroes at Home program benefit from Child and Youth Services training on such subjects as nutrition and child abuse reporting, McCormick said, and are able to take that training and teach it to civilian volunteers in the off-post Parents at Home program.
Relationships with the civilian parent educators are close, Smith said — and need to be.
“We go from prenatal to three, but sometimes we have families that have children who are older than three, and then we refer them out to the Waynesville program. Also when we have children who are aging out of the 3-year-old, we encourage them to go to the Waynesville program as well,” Smith said.
Smith said instructional materials designed for Heroes at Home are freely shared with civilian Parents as Teachers workers who could benefit.
“They visit many military families as well and we don’t want those families to go without these materials because that’s what they’re for,” Smith said.
The Heroes at Home program is now offered at 12 installations but 24 more could be added, she said, and the program might expand from pre-natal to three years to the civilian equivalent program’s age range of 5 years old.
“There is no basic training for parenting, but there is ‘Parents as Teachers/Heroes at Home,’” Smith said, quoting one of the program’s mottos.
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Responding to reports of serious problems caused in family life by repeated deployments, the Department of Defense has expanded a Missouri early childhood program to a dozen military installations and could expand it much further.
Larry Goforth, the director of special services in the Waynesville R-VI School District, told board members during their August meeting that Waynesville served 597 children in the 2006-07 school year through the Parents as Teachers program, of whom 429 were military and 168 were civilian children. By the 2007-08 school year, that increased to 800 children, 587 of whom were military, through the Parents as Teachers program and its specialized military companion program, Heroes at Home.
“We are looking for another great year here, Goforth said. “We’ve had a fairly significant jump with what we can do with our servicemembers.”
Goforth said Fort Leonard Wood has extensively promoted both programs through its Child and Youth Services staff members, and introduced Amanda McCormick and Tanisha Smith, both of whom are military spouses working as parent educators in the Heroes at Home program paid by the Department of Defense but come under the supervision of the Waynesville R-VI School District.
“With both of us being military spouses, this is a program that we’re very passionate about,” McCormick said.
There’s a definite need in the military community for additional support, she said.
“Back several years ago, the Department of Defense as well as some child development specialists realized some of the extra demands that are placed on military families, some of them being that with frequent relocations often young children see multiple doctors in a short period of time and sometimes developmental issues and concerns can be very easily overlooked during that time,” McCormick said. “Most military families are not lucky enough to necessarily be stationed near close family members, so they don’t often have a lot of that support that a lot of other civilian families are able to draw upon as they are raising their young children.”
Some of that movement is unavailable for active duty military families, but McCormick said with many deployments and relocations due to the current War on Terror, families of young children are becoming concerned that children aren’t bonding and forming attachments with parents who spend many months away from home on deployments.
The Heroes at Home program takes the pre-existing Parents as Teachers program, which uses trained parents to help mentor families of new parents and teach them parenting skills as well as identify programs, and modifies it to apply to specific stresses of the military lifestyle.
The military lifestyle affects more people than just those on active duty, she said, and the program is open to military personnel in any branch of service, as well as those in the National Guard, reserve components, and Department of Defense civilians.
Locally, the Heroes at Home program works closely with the Child and Youth Services personnel at Fort Leonard Wood, she said. That’s especially important in modifying a core part of the Heroes at Home program, which expects an in-home visit at least once per month between the parent-educator and the participating family.
That created problems for military personnel, McCormick said, who didn’t want to give up scarce home time but were quite willing to meet with parent educators at the on-post day care center where their children were attending.
“Monthly home visits might not quite work because until they got home at the end of the evening they didn’t necessarily want to rush through their evening visit,” McCormick said.
Parent educators in the Heroes at Home program benefit from Child and Youth Services training on such subjects as nutrition and child abuse reporting, McCormick said, and are able to take that training and teach it to civilian volunteers in the off-post Parents at Home program.
Relationships with the civilian parent educators are close, Smith said — and need to be.
“We go from prenatal to three, but sometimes we have families that have children who are older than three, and then we refer them out to the Waynesville program. Also when we have children who are aging out of the 3-year-old, we encourage them to go to the Waynesville program as well,” Smith said.
Smith said instructional materials designed for Heroes at Home are freely shared with civilian Parents as Teachers workers who could benefit.
“They visit many military families as well and we don’t want those families to go without these materials because that’s what they’re for,” Smith said.
The Heroes at Home program is now offered at 12 installations but 24 more could be added, she said, and the program might expand from pre-natal to three years to the civilian equivalent program’s age range of 5 years old.
“There is no basic training for parenting, but there is ‘Parents as Teachers/Heroes at Home,’” Smith said, quoting one of the program’s mottos.
