Serving children and families by prioritizing positive childhood experiences
Health Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE) is a flexible framework that can make an impactful difference for all children and families through positive childhood experiences (PCEs). Many direct services providers, including practitioners, educators, and home visitors, use HOPE daily in their one-on-one services with children and families to promote PCEs.
Organizations can also implement HOPE on a larger scale to make meaningful changes in their policies, practices, and programming. HOPE can be an effective way for organizations to understand how they are already promoting PCEs to the children and families they serve and how to recognize and act upon barriers that prevent PCEs.
The HOPE National Resources Center works with organizations across multiple sectors to make these large-scale changes to promote PCEs through the HOPE framework. This blog highlights three case studies of organizations who successfully implement HOPE.
Tufts Medicine Pediatric Primary Care – Boston
Tufts Medicine Pediatric Primary Care – Boston, located at Tufts Medical Center, wanted to increase equitable access to PCEs, center family goals, and increase their staff retention and satisfaction.
After a year of implementation and policy change, they made the physical space more welcoming to patients by repainting the walls and installing a community resource corner. They also trained all staff on the HOPE framework and added questions aligning with HOPE to their annual review. New resources were created through activity worksheets for children to do with or without their parents while in the waiting room, giving space for them to share their PCEs.
Spokane Regional Health District
Spokane Regional Health District (SRHD) is a leader in public health in the state of Washington. They began their HOPE implementation journey with several goals: increase equitable access to PCEs, increase family satisfaction to reduce health disparities, improve relationships with family and provider, and increase staff retention.
Acting upon their implementation plan, they created environments that built trusting relationships between nurses and mothers, as well as other families who were previously hesitant when conversations mainly focused on ACEs. They also strengthened relationships between staff members and cross-program collaborations and promoted HOPE and PCEs through policy advocacy with local childhood coalitions to improve maternal health.
YMCA of San Diego County
The YMCA of San Diego County is the largest YMCA association in the nation, serving nearly 400,000 San Diego County residents and employing more than 4,500 people. Their goals for HOPE implementation included improving family and provider relationships, increasing staff retention and satisfaction, and creating more culturally relevant care through the HOPE framework.
To achieve these goals, their implementation process spanned internal staff development, external partner engagement, and capacity building efforts. After making these changes, the YMCA found that their staff felt more positive, satisfied, and prepared to support families. They were also able to create supportive, attentive, and collaborative services for the families they serve.
HOPE-Informed Organizational Certification
The HOPE National Resource Center welcomes all organizations and professionals to implement the HOPE framework at the scale and level that works for them. Our HOPE-Informed Organizational Certification walks organizations through a journey of cultural and organizational change by implementing HOPE. Through this collaborative process, organizations work with the HOPE team and local HOPE Champions to discuss the organizational goals and implementation plan.
In completing the Certification, organizations transition from talking about broad concepts like health equity and trauma-informed care to implementing specific actions to achieve their goals and impact with their staff support and the children and families they serve.
