This essay is adapted from an article posted on Medium.
About nine months ago, Dara told me she wanted help bringing her mother and nephew from Syria to the U.S. She had emigrated from Syria to Evanston, Illinois, with her husband and five children five years ago, with the goal of reuniting with her family.
I wanted to help, but I didn’t know where to start. As a home visitor for the federally funded Head Start/Early Head Start program, my goal is to help families develop and achieve parenting goals for their young children. I work with Dara’s 4-year-old daughter, Naya, but I support her entire family. (Names have been changed in this essay to protect their privacy, and the family has agreed to share their story.) As a home visitor, I provide resources, connections, and experiences to her family and the other families I support.
Over the years, I have provided lessons and activities for the children I work with as well as supporting families with things like obtaining food and diapers, filling out school applications, and securing affordable housing, but this was a new request for me.
First, I decided to do some research on the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website, learned a bit about the process, printed out the necessary documents, and contacted an Arabic interpreter from my organization for help with translation.
Dara is I-730, Petition for Relative of Refugee/Asylee Forms. I looked at the forms myself, and even as a native English speaker, they were daunting. I knew Dara would know even less. We spent months gathering the information she needed. When the massive paperwork was finally completed a few weeks ago, I handed Dara two large envelopes and explained that we needed to take them to the post office to have them weighed for postage before sending them.
“I don’t know what to do,” she told me.
Dara had never been to a U.S. Post Office. We decided to plan a trip with her kids to learn about the experience of mailing. I prepared as best I could by sharing what we would encounter. I couldn’t anticipate everything, but those conversations helped set us up for success. On the day of the trip, Dara and her kids shared a new experience that helped them grow as a people. It takes a lot of courage to step out of your comfort zone. And the best part was, the kids got to watch their mom try something new as she advocated for her family.
I have worked in early childhood education for 25 years. During that time, I have served as a teacher, a preschool owner and director, and now as a home visitor. My professional experience in early childhood education gives me a deep understanding of the importance of the work. I also understand this from my personal experience as a mother who endured difficult parenting periods, breastfeeding a colicky baby and accepting the reality that taking maternity leave would mean less income for my family. Looking back, I wish I had the reassurance and support of a home visitor.
How the Home Visiting Program Supports Families
Through my work as a home visitor, I serve 11 children and their families, including Naya’s. All of these families speak a language other than English at home, and eight of them are immigrants to the United States. I visit each family weekly, providing resources for the parents as well as opportunities to learn and practice skills that will help their children thrive. Parents and guardians are their children’s first teachers, and I support them in being the best teachers they can be. By participating in the home visiting program, I have: Supporting families It has to do with health and wellbeing, and in my experience, these programs are particularly effective for immigrant families.
During our visits, I bring developmentally appropriate lessons for Naya, who is fluent in both Arabic and English. Like many children who are learning two languages, she is a little behind in learning the names of letters and numbers, but as many parents can attest, being bilingual is a great way to start a family. Beneficial for brain developmentand she will catch up with her monolingual classmates.
Over the past year, in addition to doing these activities for Naya and navigating her travel documents, I’ve helped Dara and her family make great strides with other goals. Working with one of our partner resource groups, the family of seven was able to secure new housing and move from a two-bedroom apartment to a five-bedroom home. After they moved, I was able to help Dara enroll her older children in a new school system. That process was just as difficult as filling out the I-730 form, but we got through it together.
Every family has their own unique goals and needs, so my work varies depending on the family I support. Sometimes I educate parents about child development and safety, other times I provide resources for engaging with their children, and other times I help families navigate challenges they face, like finding an emergency fund when SNAP benefits are delayed, learning a new bus route to school, or, more recently, getting to the post office.
Expanding access is key
the study We know that investing in early childhood education has great benefits for children and families, and there is evidence that home visiting programs are invaluable to parents like Dara. Yet these programs are chronically underfunded and understaffed. Despite the impact home visiting can have on child development and family well-being, access is limited; there just aren’t enough funds to make visits available to all children who need them.
By fostering a stronger awareness of the benefits these programs bring to children, families, and society, we can increase access for children and their families. We can advocate for increased and consistent funding from the federal government so that all families who want to benefit from this service can access it immediately, instead of being placed on a waiting list where they may have to wait years.
Solutions were proposed with a view to empowering families. Focus Groups I recently participated in a home visitor program in Illinois, whose goal was to provide parents who participate in home visiting programs with training in child development, goal setting, and record-keeping skills, and to create a path for them to become home visitors themselves. While such an approach requires oversight, support, and funding, it is one that can increase the well-being of original families by providing training, improving economic stability, and increasing connections across the community, and it could exponentially help others.
Imagine Dara guiding her children through the process of registering them for school or taking them to the post office. Would she need some guidance or support in doing this? Of course, we all do. But she would be providing invaluable experience to families, especially those new to the country, that would bring her closer to her own personal goals.