Good News for Parents of Young Children

A few years ago, The Urban Child Institute (UCI) and Neighborhood Christian Centers partnered on a simple concept that would encourage Mid-South families to spend time together in a way that fused science and good old fashioned parenting. What emerged was Touch Talk Read Play (TTRP).

The TTRP message is simple and powerful; babies' brains are growing at a remarkable rate and what they soak up in the world around them goes right into the mix. Gentle touch, engaging talk, being read to and freely playing with caregivers fuels a child's development through the period of the most explosive brain growth in their lives.

Now, UCI is partnering with area groups to get this simple but powerful message to the widest possible network of new parents.

"We created our own curriculum, founded in science, and piloted it with Neighborhood Christian Centers" said Katy Spurlock, Director of Education and Dissemination for The Urban Child Institute. She recently spoke with MemphisConnect about a program of UCI's; trainer to trainer TTRP sessions targeting city and community leaders, health care workers and educators.

To cast a wide net, UCI is working with the Congregational Health Network, an outreach program run by Methodist Hospital, which historically has focused on keeping the public informed about preventative health issues that affect adults, like high blood pressure and diabetes.

"We approached them about running our program through their network, which has more than 400 churches," said Spurlock. "Representatives from these churches come to the training sessions and take back what they learn to their congregations."

The Methodist network is large. Because of their reach, the UCI message is hitting key audiences all over the region.

A seven-week course recently wrapped at West Memphis' Crittenden Regional Hospital, which is a part of the Methodist network. Upcoming sessions will be held at Germantown Methodist Hospital, and, in April, UCI will work with the Junior League on a four-week course at Lester Community Center.

Though trainer to trainer sessions may in theory create the widest reach of the message, Spurlock says the TTRP training program is adaptable enough to make an impact with many audiences.

"Another group that has asked us to be a part of what they are doing is the Community Alliance for the Homeless," said Spurlock. She said that organization - with several other partners - has recently received a federal grant related to at-risk children and families. "It targets women with children, many of whom have young children. They've asked us to provide this training for the mothers that will be part of this Housing First initiative. In this case, we'd be working directly with the mothers."

Spurlock says if the need for sessions continues to grow, it will soon be a bigger program than UCI staff could handle, which she says is a good thing.

"If this were to ever get as big as we would like it to be, we couldn't continue to do it ourselves," she said. "We'd have to rely on other people being trained as trainers, which really would be a nice problem to have. It already feels like a nice problem that I'm a little overwhelmed thinking about the staff we have and the sessions already on the calendar."

"We burned a lot of calories developing this thing, building it from scratch," said Spurlock. "What we did was kinda cool. We took a homegrown message and mixed it with some solid science that's been in place for more than ten years. We're still evaluating the total value of this training. If it proves to be effective, we'll stick with it. If not, we will find out what does work and go with that."

This article was originally published online by MemphisConnect: http://www.memphisconnect.com/memphis-living30922