VALLEY — Every parent and every family has had an obstacle in their life that has left them searching for a helping hand, and sometimes it’s the family one would least expect.

One young Valley mother has made all of the right moves, everything she was told she should do to avoid having to rely on public services to get by in life. She finished high school, and then college to become a teacher. However, when she was ready to go into her chosen field she faced a seemingly insurmountable challenge — there were no childcare openings for her child.

She called everywhere she could possibly think of to find an opening and found herself running into dead ends at every turn. Finally, she reached out to the Early Childhood Council where she spotted a brochure for the Working Together Program. The brochure described the program’s goals of helping parents get better employment or a certificate through Trinidad State Junior College. Having tried everything else, she reached out to Bill Lambert, Working Together Program coordinator at La Llave Family Resource Center.

Working Together Program flyers have been distributed around Alamosa, Costilla and Saguache counties to inform people about the assistance, advocacy and support being offered to families in those counties. The program works to create a strong collaboration between the home visiting programs in these areas and existing community supports and resources.

Funding for the Working Together Program has been provided through the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Maternal Infant Early Childhood Home Visitation (MIECHV) innovation program. Mary Alice Cohen, MIECHV program manager for the Colorado Office of Early Childhood, says the Valley was chosen to apply for this opportunity because “the Valley had been experiencing challenges with homelessness, extreme poverty, substance abuse, and other needs. The combination of visionary leadership and challenging social issues led us to the Valley to explore next steps.”

One of the first steps was to identify partners who would be able to offer valuable supports and resources to San Luis Valley families. These supports include educational resources through Trinidad State Junior College, employment services through the Colorado Workforce Center, support from local departments of human services, housing and financial supports through Adelante, mental health resources through the SLV Behavioral Health Group, childcare resources through Early Childhood Council and financial coaching provided through Mpowered. In order to use funding from MIECHV, families must also participate in home visitation services through Parents as Teachers, SafeCare CO, Healthy Steps or Nurse Family Partnerships.

Cohen reached out to La Llave Family Resource Center Executive Director Coral Hartless to see if the organization, which houses both Parents as Teachers and SafeCare CO, would serve as the backbone organization for the program. Hartless saw that the program would take time and would require a great deal of organization. However, she also realized that “it has such a great potential to help our families here in the Valley.”

Now, parents, like the young mother described earlier, are seeing the results of all of that hard work. Through the Working Together Program she will begin working as an selementary teacher this year, which would not have been possible for her without adequate childcare. She is also looking into the future, where she is interested in completing the requirements to become a childcare director.

Another parent had received an eviction notice, but her participation in the Working Together Program allowed her to work with Adelante to secure her housing. She is now working toward beginning her GED at TSJC. A single father, who was referred to the program was able to find work and has maintained that position. Another participant will soon test for her Certified Nurses Aid license, with the help of the Working Together Program partners.

Though the Working Together Program offers a great deal of benefit for the area, Lambert insists that the hard work is all done by the parents, saying, “They make the appointments, sacrifice and do everything they can to make their goals a reality. We are just here to offer any support and encouragement we can.”

In order to provide that support and advocacy, the Working Together Program implementation team meets monthly to ensure that communication remains strong and that each family has access to all of the supports and resources available to them. Cohen says the meetings are inspiring and show how “the leaders brainstorm solutions to the various hurdles that pop up in the process of program development.”

The program has had great successes so far, and the team is extremely excited to welcome even more participants. In order to qualify as a Working Together Program participant a family must meet the following criteria:

* Have children under 5 years old

* Have legal residency in Alamosa, Costilla, or Saguache counties

* Join a home visiting programs to learn about parenting and child health and development

* Contact Lambert at 589-9688 to set up an appointment

Hartless says she hopes that the program is able to continue long into the future and that we can “use this as a tool to truly combat the generational cycles of poverty and other challenges our families are facing.” In order to continue it is important that families and community partners understand the value and see the great potential benefits of this program.

Cohen says that the team is doing its best to identify families who would like to participate, and “We hope that the community embraces this project and helps spread the word about this incredible opportunity. The home visiting parent educators and the Working Together team are there to support families to reach their dreams every step of the way.”