The Harlem Children’s Zone® (HCZ) and the Brazelton Touchpoints Center engaged in ‘collaborative consultation’ to co-create early childhood and parent support programming. This collaboration is the story of a community coming together to reclaim and reconstruct environments for raising children and to connect adult caregivers to support each other in that process. A relational, developmental, strengths-based, and culturally grounded approach was employed to build mutual respect, trust, and understanding over time in authentic relationships required for shared learning, and for programme development and improvement. The inherent and culturally rooted strengths and resources of parents, and other family and community members mutually reinforced each other as contexts and conditions were created in which these caregivers could come together to activate their community’s collective problem-solving capacity, to share their dreams for their children, and to provide emotional support and concrete resources for each other.
A Chance to Thrive, Not Just Survive Ebola: A Model for International
Psychosocial Support Programming in Emergency and Disaster Settings
