Narrator 00:02
Welcome to Archways' Threads, a show focusing on the threads of family and recovery support services that help make up the tapestry of life in recovery. Join us as we share stories from peers and participants in the field and practice of peer recovery support and family support and strengthening. And now your host, Archways CEO Michelle Lennon.
Michelle Lennon 00:28
Hello, everyone. I'm Michelle Lennon. I am the host of Family Threads. And I am very excited. Did I say Family Threads? I am the host of Archways Threads' Podcast. And, ironically, Family Threads is one of our programs that, actually, Karen Welford has been very instrumental in helping us formalize, so I'm excited to have Karen here with me. For those of you who don't know Karen Welford, she's been pretty much one of the gurus of family support practice in the state of New Hampshire, and also nationally, having sat on the National Family Support and Strengthening's Governing Council, right? Is that what they called it?
Karen Welford 01:04
Steering Committee. The National Family Support Network Steering Committee.
Michelle Lennon 01:07
The Network. I remember her from my first family support job. I can remember sitting in her office and being interviewed, and she had said something to me that just told me I needed to work here for Karen. She had been the Director of the Family Resource Center in Laconia, and has done some interim stints setting up programs, really, for the Belknap House, which is a family homeless shelter. She'd been a TA person for the whole state of Massachusetts for Head Start, and just a long history in this field. So we're really excited to have her today. Karen, do you want to share a little bit more about yourself and how you ended up in the world of family support?
Karen Welford 01:56
Yeah, it seems impossible, but it was more than 40 years ago. I started as a nurse and started working for Visiting Nurse Association, because I really, by that time in my career, had figured out that what I really wanted to do was work with individuals within the context of their environment and their family, and that's really where change can happen. And it just so happened there was an early intervention program there, and I thought: "This is interesting." I really liked working with the families with young children with disabilities, and started working as a nurse within that program. Then it progressed from there, and I became the director, and then in the 1990s—it seems like ancient history, but it was less than 30 years ago—the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act was passed by the federal, by Congress. And in it, it said that the services to infants and toddlers would be family-centered. And this is the first time, I think, that there was really an acknowledgement of the importance of the family with children with disabilities. It wasn't an educational act to be done in school, but it was to be done at home. And that was really exciting for us that had been working with children and their families. So I went to work for the Department of Public Health in Massachusetts and helped to really develop the system of early intervention within Massachusetts, because it was at that point mandated. We moved to New Hampshire in 2000 and, lo and behold, they also had a system of early intervention called Early Supports and Services, and I was hired by them to work with their system. I left there and worked with an equality in childcare program, so I learned a lot about childcare. And then I worked for the regional New England network of technical assistance for Head Start and learned a lot about Head Start. I decided again that my calling was to really work locally, and went to work for Lakes Region Community Services, and became the Director of the Family Resource Center. And that's kind of where I ended my career, although it didn't really end; it just keeps going in a lot of different ways.
Michelle Lennon 04:31
I think many of us who have worked in the field need people like you, I'm just gonna say. Because what I have found is that people don't really understand family support as a practice, even still, after all the work that you and others, and the directors that were loosely associated with what used to be Family Support New Hampshire—it's really morphed into something different lately—but just thinking back to all of the hard work to get the word out of "What is family support?" Because I think it was you who told me, yeah, people misunderstand it and think it's like, oh, we do random acts of kindness for families or something.
Karen Welford 05:12
And actually, that's where it started. When I think back to the beginning of my career, there was nothing to tell us what family support was. And so we went a lot on women's intuition, because it was mostly women that were doing this at that time, and random acts of kindness, really, and just went forward from there. It wasn't until we actually got some science that told us that early experiences and early relationships make a difference in the brains of children. And you remember when it all came out from the Center of the Developing Child and Jack Shonkoff's "From Neurons to Neighborhoods," the science told us that it actually changes the brain, that you can change the foundation of the brain by the relationships and the experiences that young children have: the "serve and return." And that is really when family support started to be seen as a practice, as a field, because we had evidence that it made a difference. Before that, we really didn't have any evidence. There was nothing that told us what was good family support and what wasn't good family support. But that piece, as well as the discussion around adverse childhood experiences—I think those two things really did make a difference in how we saw what we were doing in family support, and that was only in the 2000s, believe it or not, less than 20 years ago. So the field of family support and strengthening is really new compared to the field of medicine, of education. I feel really fortunate to have been part of the evolution of this field and to hopefully have a little bit of impact on it, because it is that new, and we were really making decisions of what family support and strengthening was going to be.
Michelle Lennon 07:32
I think you've had an humongous impact on the field. When I look at just some of where my co-workers are today: We have Jen Doris, who has done so much work for Early Support and Services. She's done so much work at the state. She's now the Director of Whole Village, which is one of the bigger Granite United Way initiatives in the Plymouth area. I think of Carrie Lowe, who has done so much to push peer recovery support services forward in the Lakes Region area, worked with the Public Health Network, and then went on to really do a lot of good work with housing. I mean, you've kind of built some powerhouse women in those little home visitors that you had back in the day, huh?
Karen Welford 08:13
Well, I really feel like the greatest fulfillment I've got from this job is the mentorship that I've provided to young women that and I can go all the way back to the women that were on the team in Massachusetts, and I work with the Department of Public Health, and I see what their contribution—and yourself—and what their contributions have been to the field, and it just is something that really makes me smile.
Michelle Lennon 08:42
I think one of my frustrations has been—and it's funny, because I have gotten the word out to different people in different places—is this idea that family support is a practice, and that some people really miss that. And we have our principles of family support, and we have our frameworks of family support. But thinking about the principles in family support practice, one of the big ones—and I would say they're all pretty important—is "Staff and families work together in relationships based on equality and respect." One of the reasons why we have integrated our family resource centers with peer recovery support services is that feeling that families affected by addiction have not been treated with respect, and it's like we got to get these principles back into play. And I think when people don't have the framework of family support, they don't know what they're missing, and they don't know the services that their families are not getting, that they could be, with a little bit of education. So, what do you think about what that says to you when we talk about equality and respect and the provider and participant relationship?
Karen Welford 09:50
I guess through my my time and working in this field, it's harder to walk the walk than to talk the talk, so that we really can say we are meeting families with equality and that they have control over their life. And it means that we're not judgmental, and it's not always easy. So that is one of the principles that I think continues to need to be looked at mostly as we talk about what we're doing with families and how we're making decisions—whether we're making decisions on what's best for the program? Are we making decisions on what's best for the family? And it really needs to be looked at. And also, I guess that principle also says the family knows the child best. And again, I think we're better at that now; we've kind of acknowledged that a lot more. Certainly at the beginning of my practice, that was always hard. It was, "The professional knew the most." We had education. We know what's best for that family, we know what's best for that child, and we'll tell you what to do. And that is something that has really changed as we looked individually at having the family create their own goals. It's their goals, and we know that it's not going to be successful if we are telling them what to do.
Michelle Lennon 11:29
Nobody likes to be told what to do, right? I think in peer recovery, we often say, "You don't 'should' on people. " And when we say, "You don't 'should' on people," you don't "You should do this. You should do that." And we really have been really pressing the peer workforce to take motivational interviewing trainings, to understand appreciative inquiry, to understand that we can ask good questions and treat people not as objects or not as the recipients of our wisdom, right? But really as resources, that you are the resource on your own life. Let me help dig out some information, maybe,through motivational interviewing, but I think sometimes people get the minimum amount of training when they really need a lot more to really get to that core value of being person-centered. That you are the driver of your own life and your own your own ship, so to speak.
Karen Welford 12:24
I think it's an ongoing thing with staff. It's reflective supervision with them to say what's happening with this family. Let's think about what your contribution is to the decisions that are going to be made. Is there any judgment there, or whatever? It's more than just a training; it's an ongoing support to the staff for that, because it's not an easy thing. I mean, like I said, you can talk the talk, but it's not easy to walk the walk.
Michelle Lennon 13:00
I think we all need reminders at times, because I know even as a supervisor, sometimes I just want to say, "Just do it because I said so." I think I'm my mother, because we just want something done. And what I have found when we shortcut the discovery process for anybody, it doesn't stick.
Karen Welford 13:20
Yeah, absolutely.
Michelle Lennon 13:24
Another one of the principles is that, "Staff enhances family's capacity to support the growth and development of all family members." Adults, youth, and children. How does that speak to you?
Karen Welford 13:38
Yeah, this is what I what brings us out of the clinical realm.
Michelle Lennon 13:45
Yeah, that's another important part of family support.
Karen Welford 13:47
That's what is the difference between family support and counseling, mental health counseling, or social work, or whatever, that you have a client, and that's who you work with, and that's who you make goals with, and they do wonderful work that way. Family support is about the whole family, and the dynamics within the family, the relationships within the family, the relationships within the community. And so when we think about the goals, it isn't for one of them, it's not one of the family members. It's for any and all of them. And so you really broaden your understanding of what's happening in the home, and I think in many ways have a greater impact, because you're you're looking at what is impacting whatever is happening in the family, not just one individual, but the whole family.
Michelle Lennon 14:44
And the whole environment. I think about that when a child is happy, parents are generally happy. When a child is not happy, it usually creates stress in the family, or vice versa. Dad loses a job, and suddenly things are tight. Mom's working all the hours, all the work still has to be done, and sometimes depression comes in or anxiety and the stress goes up. And we know that incidents of child abuse and neglect generally happen when families are super stressed.
Karen Welford 15:15
What we say a lot with family resource centers is that we can't do it all, and that's why it's important that we know the resources within the family. So with that example, can we help get that father a job so that the mother has less stress and becomes less depressed because that's impacting the child? So we're not going to—I remember saying this to the staff so often—we're not going to go out and find employment, but we know who can. So, as my friend says, "We know the number." So, yeah, that's why it's different, why we don't just look at that mother's depression and how can we help it? We look at the causes of it, the environment, what can we change that will have an impact on that family and that they want to work on, which goes back to the motivational interviewing.
Michelle Lennon 16:19
So families are resources to their own members—you just alluded to that—to other families, to programs, to communities. I think about that citizenship involvement. I think one of the things that I know our center has been working on is the idea of a parent advisory board, or how do we get back to that? Because we had a little advisory board before COVID hit, and we just haven't picked that up yet. But I was thinking about how building capacity for families, it is a wider lens I would say that family support takes than most fields of practice.
Karen Welford 16:52
Yes, I think that the idea of families being resources to other families. Family resource centers, many of them started as comprehensive family support services, because that's where the funding was here in New Hampshire. And they may not have had any group activities.
Michelle Lennon 17:16
Like the ancillary supports we talked about for healthy social connection.
Karen Welford 17:19
Yes, so they would be seeing home visiting, which was important. But the idea that these networks that you build and that families can be resources to other families is one of the protective factors. So, I think that's where as a practice, as a field, we've really learned that "and this and this and this" are all important when you think of what you can offer to families, and it isn't just us.
Michelle Lennon 17:55
Our field, I would say, at some times, when people get some role clarityconfusion issues going on, don't understand that we can do that. Because so often we are about HIPAA or we are about 42 CFR compliance, that we have to protect everybody's confidentiality, and we kind of miss the boat sometimes. We'll talk about the strengthening families framework in a little bit, but that healthy social connection means people are going to talk to each other.
Karen Welford 18:25
Absolutely. They're going to say what they want to say; you don't control that. So sometimes that's hard, and sometimes you think it'd be easier if they didn't talk to each other, but you don't have control over it, and you need to allow it and work with whatever is happening at that point.
Michelle Lennon 18:46
And those relationships generally do form organically in a lot of different programs, like parent education is one of the core functions of Family Resource Center, of quality, delivering services, parent education. And we see those relationships sometimes develop among families when they're when they're learning together.
Karen Welford 19:05
So often, yes, and that lasts a lifetime, whereas we come and go. That's what, when talking to staff, is always something that I remind people: Yes, we're important in their lives, and we do really help, but we leave at some point. So those relationships that you can help build can last a lifetime, and that is one of our responsibilities. Again, different than clinical, that's a really important responsibility. As is one of the—I don't know if I were going to jump to this—but building leadership in the community and helping families be aware of the environment and their community and what they can do, how that impacts their family, and what, if anything, they can do to work on that. That doesn't mean every family that comes into a family resource center becomes community aware and community active, but it really is—there are families that get to the point where they are ready to do that and it's our responsibility to help them be aware of how the community is impacting their family and to help to change what needs to be changed.
Michelle Lennon 20:44
Sometimes that advocacy leads to things like playgrounds being repaired, or opera houses being saved, or ski areas offering free passes to kids that can't afford to access some of the local resources.
Karen Welford 21:01
I think a lot of times we think in family support, "Well, they are making their own goals for their own family, so that's enough." The idea that they have input to policies for the program, that we listen to them and truly listen to them, is something that, that's why so many programs don't have a parent advisory council. It's hard. It is hard and so that's really the next step when you're looking at quality is, "Do the participants, do the families, have input, not just on their own goals, but do they have input on the program, on the governance of the program, on the policy making of the program, on the hiring. There's many layers. I think Head Start is a good example for us to look at, because they do that.
Michelle Lennon 22:02
Really well, really well. I'm thinking back to Danielle Perrino, who runs our play group. She's an amazing person. She's been around this field for a long time, and how when COVID hit, we had the experience of having to shut down a lot of our programs that focus on social connection, including the play group and I can remember her advocating for her families. You know that they're going stir crazy, and the the level of stress in the homes are skyrocketing. She worked with a local trainer, Jen Adams, who has a program called Fierce Fitness in our area to develop an outdoor play group where the kids literally had pool noodles wrapped around their heads with these giant foam stingers coming off their heads, and they were playing mosquito tag inside of a tennis court, which became like the big, giant playroom. So they weren't on top of each other. They had these mosquito things to keep them apart so they weren't tagging each other with their hands or anything, but it got the families out of the house. And we had to, as an agency, really weigh the consequences of that, because God forbid that somebody would get COVID and have some of the horrible complications that we did see in that time. But the level of parental stress was so great, it's like we counted the cost and said, "Let's do it. Let's have them sign a waiver. Let's get them out, and let's pay the money for the trainer to help us and all of that." And I think that is also the work of the family support specialist is to advocate for your families. And in doing that, they also give their families a voice to say, "Hey, you advocated for yourself. I'm listening. I went to bat for you." But it also teaches that. So I think that role model function often happens in the context of family support.
Karen Welford 23:56
Absolutely. And to have a system or an organization actually listen. A lot of times, families do not have that experience in the other systems that they bump into, and so to actually acknowledge that you're listening and that you've made changes because of what they have advocated for is so important.
Narrator 24:29
Thank you for listening to Archways' Threads. If there is a topic you'd like to see us cover, email us at podcast@archwaysnh.org or call us at 603-960-2128. Visit our website at archwaysnh.org to learn more about the Archways family of recovery and family resource centers.