HOPE provides a language to enhance effective youth programming
Lincoln County is a low density, rural county in Montana that once had a thriving mill industry but has been struggling for some time now. The umbrella group Zero to Five Lincoln County, as well as nonprofits within it like Lincoln County Unite for Youth, are using the HOPE framework to improve outcomes for families struggling with poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence and isolation.
“I came home” is how Maggie Anderson, HOPE Facilitator and project coordinator for Lincoln County Unite for Youth, felt the first time she learned about HOPE at an event at the Montana Institute. For decades, she’d been working in various roles supporting youth — as a teacher and as an advocate. And she herself grew up in Lincoln County with 11 siblings. She experienced firsthand the Four Building Blocks of HOPE, the key types of positive childhood experiences (PCEs) outlined in the HOPE framework, like relationships and external support systems she needed during times of hardship.
Finally “there’s this language that really encompasses what we need to be doing,” she said, of the work in Lincoln County.
Anderson has since become an advocate for HOPE and recalls multiple instances when it helped others in her field better understand why certain kinds of youth programming really matter. During one HOPE presentation that she led, she witnessed firsthand the moment when the framework clicked for a Lincoln County commissioner.
“He understood that … prevention and community building is not just doing cool things for kids. It’s building a system and a framework within the community that holds these things and can actually grow these things, these better outcomes from these experiences.”
Anderson recalls one collaborative event, the “Back to School Blast,” where multiple agencies and organizations come together to provide students with school supplies and disseminate information about resources available to children and families. This event also helps stitch together community in a county where families often live so far from each other. From birth to five years old, many children don’t get chances to play together.
She says that providing a framework to the participating groups for why these kinds of events are important “honors the great work that’s being done by these individuals and organizations, and then they’re more willing to say yes to the next thing.”
Elevating positive childhood experiences as means of prevention
In the last couple of years, the event has grown from a handful of people to over 600. She attributes this to the buy-in that participating organizations feel, and to understanding why positive childhood experiences are critical.
“We want to flip the script, and we want to invite people into ‘what are you doing to promote prevention?’” she said. “So, instead of decreasing youth substance use, what are we doing to promote healthy lifestyles? Instead of decreasing anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation, what are we doing to elevate well-being? And there’s actual markers that define if we’re addressing well-being, right?”
Dorey Rowland, collaboration coordinator for Zero to Five Lincoln County which is an initiative based out of the county Department of Health, became a HOPE Facilitator shortly after Anderson.
“We’re trying to create healthy, hopeful conditions for families,” she said. “When we’re approaching the work we do, it’s less focused on ‘this is what’s wrong, we’re trying to fix it’ and more focused on, ‘let’s make these beautiful options for people.’”
Since being trained on the HOPE framework, Rowland has offered an Introduction to HOPE training to her health department colleagues; she has built HOPE into the department’s community health implementation plan; and she framed the Zero to Five collaborative’s 4-hour reflection session with HOPE. But perhaps most significant are the efforts that have been made to institutionalize HOPE as the chosen approach to providing children and family services throughout the county. It is now written into Rowland’s job description that her work will be guided by the framework.
Anderson echoes the importance of institutionalizing HOPE.
“Eventually we can look back and say, ‘well, we used to have high levels of things, and we no longer do.’ And that actually is where we are … Lincoln County has made significant progress over the last 15 years in those areas,” she said. “We are no longer the dark red on the map.”
