A DECADE OF ‘LISTENING TO BABIES’

THE FAMILY STUDY CENTER LOOKS BACK WHILE PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE

Carrie O’Brion

In February of 2013, USF’s Family Study Center (FSC), in collaboration with community partners from the Concerned Organization for Quality Education for Black Students (COQEBS) School Readiness Committee, debuted “Listening to Babies,” a unique training series designed for professionals who work in healthcare, early education, child welfare and many other organizations that serve young children and their families.

The series initially showcased the remarkable scientific evidence that babies - even newborn infants – communicate meaningfully with their caregivers from the earliest moments of their life. The event would evolve into one of the most popular annual professional training series of the past decade for early childhoodserving agencies in Pinellas County, attracting thousands of professionals, providers and caregivers through the years.

In February 2022, Listening to Babies celebrated its 10th anniversary and the final session in the series. Featuring special contributions from St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch and former COQEBS president and founder of the Baby Talk initiative, the late Rev. Watson Haynes, the gathering was a time to reflect back on the meaningful community progress that had been made, and an opportunity to look ahead to where future gains must continue to be made to fulfill unmet goals.

The 10th anniversary event was one major highlight for the FSC, which received Board of Governers acknowledgement as an approved USF Center during a productive and eventful year in 2022. Among the FSC’s notable accomplishments:

• Wrapping up its landmark seven-year “Figuring It Out for the Child” study on the transition to new parenthood for African American coparents

• Readying a soon-to-be-released major feature article on the groundbreaking findings from that study, to appear in the international Infant Mental Health Journal

• Welcoming Dr. Selin Salman-Engin from Bilkent University (Ankara, Turkey) to take the helm of an international coparenting collaborative led by the FSC, partnering with sister North American Centers in Washington, DC and Toronto, Canada, and involving major family-serving Centers in Italy, Israel, Switzerland and Sweden

• Providing services to 87 Pinellas County children birth-to-age 5 and their families who had experienced trauma and early adversity, through its direct services clinic, the Infant-Family Center

• Serving more than 50 child welfare-involved families through “Within My Reach” healthy relationship and Child Parent Psychotherapy interventions

• Providing nearly 700 hours of reflective supervision to 74 early learning professionals in 14 counties throughout the state of Florida as part of the FSC’s Reflective Supervision Project

• Receiving more than $2 million in continuation support from the Administration for Children and Families, Florida Department of Early Learning, Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County, Pinellas County Department of Human Services and Foundation for Healthy St. Petersburg

• Welcoming a new three-year $193,000 grant from United Way Suncoast to support an innovative community-based initiative to serve families with infants and young children, “Cafes, Coparenting and Community.”

The United Way initiative allows the FSC to meaningfully respond to input it has received over the years from families in the community.

We want to work with them while also providing the latest information to parents and caregivers so we can work as a community to eliminate the disparities in educational outcomes.

“Parents in our community have told us that supports and services are most beneficial to them if they’re offered when and where they need them, in the ways they need them,” explained James McHale, the FSC’s director. “This new project allows trusted members of the community to deliver useful supports in accessible family-friendly settings, so parents can connect in the ways they find most helpful.”

HOPE FOR TOMORROW

As the Listening to Babies series evolved through the years, it sharpened its focus on the early experiences of African American children and their parents. Spotlighted were not just influences within households, but within childcare settings and in the broader community encircling the efforts of African American families – in particular, the experiences parents had with family-serving agencies.

The February 25-26 event, held at Pinellas Technical College, was themed around the concept of “Sankofa,” an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana, meaning “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” Event organizers staged the gathering both to include a recounting of knowledge gained through critical examination of past efforts, and collaborative conversations to guide planning that might ensure a better future.

Among the event’s highlights was a conversation led by two of the School Readiness Committee’s most active leaders, each directors of high-quality learning centers in south St. Petersburg. Twanna Monroe, owner and director of Infinite Potential Learning Center, and Jackie Lang, owner and director of Imagination Station, explained what parents seek from centerbased care for their children and addressed the most important elements in delivering high quality care to even the youngest of children - respect, relationship-based caregiving and authentic connection with parents and caregivers.

Monroe explained that the information they shared “reflects what Listening to Babies looks like to me and how we implement respecting young children at our school - not speaking at or towards them but taking the time to stop and listen and pay attention to their cues.”

Lang, who like Monroe has participated in Baby Talk events since 2012, said “it has been encouraging to witness the participation and expectations that parents have for their children...investing in our learners of today gives hope for our leaders of tomorrow.”

Event highlights also featured:

• A retrospective look at the aims, ambitions and accomplishments of the 10-year Listening to Babies run by McHale;

• A parent panel conversation, led by Russia Collins, Clinical and Training Director for the Family Study Center’s Infant-Family Center, on the experiences of young Black children as they transition from preschool environments to take on the challenges of the formal school system;

• A featured presentation by longtime Family Study Center collaborator Maureen Joseph kicking off breakout groups where attendees contributed to discussions centered around major themes that have emerged over the past decade; and

• How lessons learned from the past decade could inform intentional next steps for the decade to come.

COQEBS leaders emphasized that now more than ever, candid conversations about the experiences of Black and Brown children are vitally important for communities to engage in.

“There are nuances between cultures that pre-K providers, public school teachers and administrators need to understand to have a better relationship with their students, regardless of what background they are coming from,” said Ricardo (Ric) Davis, president of COQEBS. “We want to work with them while also providing the latest information to parents and caregivers so we can work as a community to eliminate the disparities in educational outcomes.”

MEETING FAMILIES WHERE THEY ARE

Over the years, the FSC has grown its efforts to offer the supports families most desire in the ways they wish to receive them. During the height of the COVID outbreak, this involved bringing resources to families with infants and toddlers at home virtually through the Pinellas Community Foundation-sponsored initiative, “Attending to Infant-Family Mental Health in Pinellas County during COVID-19.”

With Floridians resuming fully their pre-COVID routines, community-based initiatives are important once again, and on July 1, United Way Suncoast announced a new phase in its long relationship with the FSC through sponsorship of the multi-year “Cafes, Coparenting and Community” initiative. The project is being led by FSC Assistant Program Director LaDonna Butler, who has extensive prior experience delivering “Parent Cafes” to community members in St. Petersburg.

In the recurring community cafes, or other program services funded by the award, parents can access support through one-time or multitouch contacts, virtually or in-person. Cafes and community events understand the ongoing stressors impacting families’ lives, help kindle parental attentiveness to infant mental health at home, validate and support parents’ engagement in children’s development and highlight the important social and emotional skills toddlers and preschool children will need to call upon to thrive in daycare and school settings.

United Way Suncoast’s community investment in 2022 represented a first in its 98-year history — committing nearly $18 million in a threeyear commitment to 88 nonprofits. Their new approach enables the FSC to build momentum as the program blossoms, advance the strategic planning behind the initiative and grow together with United Way Suncoast.

“Our strategic community partners requested a change to multi-year funding and the reasons are clear,” United Way Suncoast CEO Jessica Muroff said. “It will create trends and allow us to measure true impact; it’ll reduce the strain of the application process for the partners and UWS, and it’ll strengthen our ability to tell stories and fundraise.”

As the Family Study Center now looks to 2023, several new and impactful initiatives are already planned, each promising to assist coparents and the families they lead in strengthening the social and emotional thriving of Pinellas County’s infants, toddlers and preschoolers.