Five Protective Factors for Family Wellness

~ By Janelle Durham, PEPS Program Director

In the field of family wellness, and child abuse prevention, researchers have found there are five protective factors for healthy families – if parents have these things in their lives, they handle parenting well, and their children thrive. Those factors are:

1. Social connections to people who support them in their role as parents,
2. Secure attachment to the baby,
3. Concrete support and resources,
4. Parental resilience and coping skills, and
5. Knowledge of parenting and child development.

In all of our PEPS Groups (Newborn Program, Baby Peppers, and Little Peppers), we use a few simple yet powerful tools which help to build these protective factors for all families we serve:

1. When parents gather together each week and share their highs and lows, they are building social connections with other parents as they give and receive support.
2. When they sing songs or play games with the babies, they are learning ways to interact, and to strengthen the bond between them and their baby.
3. At break time, they have a chance to talk to each other about what resources are available in the community, what tools and gadgets are useful for parenting, and what ideas they have heard of for finding babysitters and child care.
4. During the topic discussions, as well as learning basic facts about eating and sleeping, they learn resilient attitudes, stress reduction skills, and problem-solving tools that help them handle the stresses of parenting and of life in general.
5. Throughout each group meeting, parents have the chance to observe several other babies the same age as their child, and through this observation, they learn invaluable lessons about child development, and about the different ways that children develop. And they observe other parents, and through that observation, learn a wide range of ideas for how to be an effective and loving parent.
   

Help us get the word out!

This year, PEPS would love to serve more families than ever – our goal is to reach over 2,000 new families with our Newborn Program, Baby Peppers (for babies 5 – 12 months), Little Peppers (for families with two children under age 3), Supplemental Groups (for LGBT Parents and Parents of Preemies), and Bringing Baby Home (a relationship skills workshop). We are especially focusing on increasing the number of Groups offered in Snohomish County and on the Eastside.
We also continue to serve well over 1,000 families in On-Going PEPS Groups, those groups that finished their 12 week session with a leader and just keep on meeting for months or years. Our services for On-Going PEPS Groups include a lecture series, access to our volunteer guest speakers for group meetings, and membership in PEPSNet, an online community hosted on BigTent.

We know the best “advertisement” for PEPS is word of mouth – having a friend, family member, or co-worker tell them about PEPS is one of the biggest reasons new families tell us they decided to join a Group. Some will say “I really never would have thought about joining a support group until all my friends told me how valuable PEPS was to them.” So we encourage you – tell all the new parents you know about PEPS – help us bring this valuable support to more families!

About The Author

Janelle oversees PEPS program operations, focusing on program planning, curriculum development, program oversight, and outcome evaluations. She does everything she can to ensure every parent has the best PEPS experience possible!

Janelle holds a BA from Brandeis University, a Master of Social Work degree from University of Washington, and a professional certificate in Spirituality, Health and Medicine from Bastyr University. She is a certified doula, lactation educator, and childbirth educator. Janelle also works as Great Starts trainer and consultant for Parent Trust for Washington Children, and is a co-author of Pregnancy, Childbirth, and the Newborn.

Contact: janelled@pepsgroup.org; (206) 547- 8570 ext 21