image

History

The short story…

In 2001, when our services were delivered out of a church basement, we served a few dozen children. Today, not quite a decade later, we serve 175 children annually, from more than 125 families.

Over time, our key services have deepened and broadened from typical core relief nursery offerings—therapeutic classes, respite care, home visits and parenting classes—to include expertise in infant and young child mental health and specific clinical assessment and therapies to address attachment and bonding difficulties experienced by our children and their parents. We have become a resource for the early childhood provider community on issues related to mental health for young children, offering training and consultation on working with complex issues in this young population. We have added to the traditional relief nursery therapeutic classroom and created a “Parent/Infant Class” that brings together women in the third trimester of pregnancy and women with babies under a year of age to offer consultation, peer-to-peer support, and clinical assessment and intervention. The cornerstone of our mental health program is Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP), which helps parents and kids heal over traumatic experiences, together. And, in the past six months, we have begun to offer services to children in foster care—a population with complex and challenging personal and family issues. Much of this latter work has included supervised visitation and counseling with biological parents and their children with the ultimate goal of family reunification.

And if you prefer the longer version of the story…

An Idea Around a Kitchen Table

Children’s Relief Nursery (CRN) began as an idea passed around a kitchen table in the late nineties. Our founders wondered, could early childhood intervention break the cycle of abuse and neglect that frequently leads to school failure, drug and alcohol abuse and criminal behavior?

Published studies of family dysfunction suggest that child abuse and neglect often trigger substance abuse, teen pregnancy, violence and juvenile crime. Later in life, this pattern can extend into adult crime and the repetition of poor parenting — perpetuating the cycle. What became increasingly clear to our founders was that child abuse and neglect during the first three years of life were critical factors causing profound and long-lasting damage to the victim. They concluded that successful intervention should occur as early as possible – and preferably from birth through age three.

Soon thereafter, they created an intervention program replicated on a statewide successful relief nursery model, designed to provide assistance and education to end child abuse and neglect. The model is known as a Relief Nursery.

The Relief Nursery model promoted three major treatments that had proven effective in the prevention of child abuse:
1) center-based therapeutic preschools/respite care centers;
2) early parent education; and
3) home visitations.

Incorporation as a Nonprofit Organization

We were incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1999 with the resolve that we would support young children and their families by furnishing early intervention and family preservation services at no cost to high-risk Multnomah County families.

Early efforts were sponsored by the Oregon Commission on Children and Families and made possible by Governor John A. Kitzhaber under Senate Bill 555.

Soon after, we launched a successful capital campaign to secure and renovate a state-of-the-art early childhood education center. The 16,500 square-foot facility is in the St. Johns neighborhood of the Portland metropolitan area. At the time, this historically underserved community had more than 500 confirmed victims of child abuse, and the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Multnomah County.

Services Launch

Our services began in 2001, with a couple of therapeutic classes, a few hours of respite childcare, parenting classes and home visits. In 2004, we reached out to the growing Latino population by hiring bilingual staff and offering classes in Spanish. The following year our program was enhanced by a four-year federal grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) as part of the National Child Traumatic Stress Initiative. The initiative is a national effort to raise awareness about the effects of trauma on young children and families. It’s also aimed at increasing services and access to services for these families. The grant allowed us to fine-tune and apply an understanding of trauma and early childhood mental health into our services. It’s also been crucial in engaging community partners. Ultimately, the grant has enhanced our work and made us experts in the field of early childhood trauma.

Children’s Relief Nursery Today

Today, others are coming to us for our expertise. We’re in the community training practitioners on topics related to trauma and young children. We’re raising awareness around the importance of detecting signs of trauma in very young children. We are in the best position to serve at-risk families with young children because we are one of only a few agencies focused exclusively on children under five and among a very small number who offer mental health services for infants and toddlers in Portland. Our proven record of building strong families coupled with our ability to adapt our program to meet community needs, make us a leader in the field of early intervention. In 2001, we served a couple dozen families. Nearly a decade later, we have more than tripled our services, giving hope to 138 families with 176 children (ages 0 to 4) in fiscal year 2009-10.