“Early relational health creates a necessary footing for young children to optimally learn and engage in the world around them. It helps children to cultivate relationships throughout their life. It lays the foundation for early brain development that helps to support learning and behaviors into adulthood. It’s foundational. Early relationships shape the well-being of both the child and the caregiver and there’s this dynamic, dyadic two-way natured relationship about early relational health that affects both generations, and it creates health for every aspect of that dyad.” — Dayna Long, MD, Benioff Children’s Hospital.

In this GLR Learning Tuesdays Partners webinar, Nurture Connection: The Movement for Early Relational Health, the Campaign for Grade-Level Reading (CGLR) was honored to host leaders of Nurture Connection, the newly launched national network committed to promoting early relational health (ERH).  Nurture Connection supports strong, positive, and nurturing early relationships for every family to build healthier, more connected communities.

Moderated by Dr. David Willis, senior fellow with the Center for the Study of Social Policy, the panel was comprised of local and national leaders and funders of the Nurture Connection movement including clinicians, family network leaders and programmatic leaders. Dr. Willis provided an overview of ERH, noting the importance of social connections and the paradigm shift needed in clinical practices to partner with families and communities to promote relational health.

Dr. Dayna Long of Benioff Children’s Hospital provided an overview of Nurture Connection, including the vision, mission and goals, and explained how families are at the center of the movement. Bringing her perspective as a practicing pediatrician and mother of three boys, Long noted that the power of healing relationships is one of the things she appreciates most about the movement.  Long also shared that Nurture Connection is developing a policy agenda to promote ERH across systems at the national, state and local levels. 

Two leaders from Nurture Connection’s Family Network Collaborative, Claudia Aristy with Children of Bellevue and Tish MacInnis with the Alabama Partnership for Children, shared their experiences working with families and how they are helping to transform systems within their communities and within the state of Alabama. 

Aristy shared her experience working with Latinx and immigrant families through the Reach Out and Read program. Aristy shared how the Family Network Collaborative of Nurture Connection has created the space to bring the voices of parents and caregivers to the forefront of the movement. She explained how families have been engaged, noting that as facilitators they bring research to families and sometimes need to translate the academic language or research questions into “living room language” and other languages such as Spanish for their family leaders. These efforts are the essential building blocks to maintaining relationships with families.  

Tish MacInnis of the Alabama Partnership for Children provided a close-in look at how the statewide network is engaging families virtually. Clearly evident was the respect for the diversity of family composition — single parent, mom or dad headed, grandparents, two parents and more. Noting the dedication of the parents and caregivers served, especially during the isolation of the pandemic, MacInnis shared that parents lobbied to increase the frequency of their virtual gatherings from monthly to weekly. Parents are hungry for knowledge and are given opportunities to enroll in specific curriculum trainings. She noted that showing up and building relationships are critical to working with families.

Allison Logan of Logan Consulting & Partners, LLC, brought the perspective of a place-based model supporting ERH. Logan was the former Executive Director of Bridgeport Prospers in Bridgeport, Connecticut. She shared how the initiative was formed and details about the Baby Bundle program. The program engaged parents in developing the model that provides prenatal to age 3 resources such as health navigators, developmental screening, doulas and more recently universal home visiting for all families.   

Carly Roberts of the Overdeck Family Foundation provided commentary on the models discussed and on Nurture Connection. She shared why this work is especially important to the Foundation and their goals to support the early development of young children. Roberts stressed the importance of deeply listening to families and challenged webinar participants to consider how to bring the concepts of Nurture Connection to life in their own communities and work. 

The panel emphasized the importance of changing paradigms within systems to engage families and help to support the development of these most critical early relationships. Audience members were invited to join Nurture Connection and become part of the movement. 

“The Nurture Connection work is really an all-in strategy for everybody. Hearing relationships matter, connection matters, countering isolation at every level starting prenatally and forward.” — David Willis, MD, FAAP