This letter was written by a mother that recently completed Family Tree SafeCare®. Family Tree SafeCare® is a flexible, free in-home visiting program for families with at least one child in the home, five years of age or younger. See more information and to sign up here.
"I want to express my gratitude to Family Tree SafeCare and their amazing Parent Support Providers. I enrolled in the program as a way to add some balance to my life from a stressful situation as a new mom and recently having separated from an abusive partner. SafeCare did that and much more. I completed all of their modules; Safety, Health and Parent-Child Interactions. These programs provide a great deal of information and structure that is instrumental for new moms or any parent for that matter; to help handle parenting and all the matters that come with it. SafeCare provided me with tools that I can implement as my child grows and that will help me be a better parent in many different aspects.
The Safety module provided a lot of instruction on how to make my home and surrounding environments safer for my baby. This was certainly an eye opener as I learned a great deal of information on hazards and safety issues that otherwise I could have ignored.
The Health module helped me become more confident in handling sickness or accidents for my child and not having to go into a panic mode at any incident. By learning the health issues managing techniques, now I feel confident that in the event of an emergency or illness, I have the tools to act appropriately in a safer and better way to help my child. As a co-parent this was a great tool as sometimes communication can be an issue in co-parenting situations when a child is shuffled between households.
I have a great appreciation for all the modules but my favorite was the Parent-Child Interaction. I learned several techniques that allowed me to form a stronger bond with my son, truly enjoy and be present during our time together and to manage ordinary parenting tasks in a more structured method. I was able to learn and implement routines that made it a lot easier for me to parent and manage the daily stress of dealing with ever changing toddler behaviors without sacrificing the enjoyment of bonding and connecting with my son.
In addition to the modules, my son and I got to participate in a festival organized by SafeCare. We had a lot of fun, he got to play and had tons of fun exploring all the activities, the food, toys and meeting new people. It was great for me to see my son interact with other children in a safe environment.
Family Tree SafeCare itself is a well-structured and organized program but what made even a bigger impact was the quality of their staff.
SafeCare providers Rynn and Veronica did a tremendous job. They were both kind, respectful, caring, compassionate, super friendly and made it very easy for me to stick with the program and accomplish my goals of completing all the modules. Rynn’s personality is such that makes you feel like family, and makes learning and working on the program fun and easy. My son and I were looking forward to our weekly appointments with her. Rynn was kind, understanding, easy to talk to, very well-informed and prepared and provided excellence guidance throughout the program.
I strongly recommend any parent out there try SafeCare - especially new parents or single parents. You will not be disappointed and have so much to gain in knowledge and experience. I am very grateful for the opportunity to have participated and to all the supporters of SafeCare, these programs make a significant impact in the community by helping one family at a time."