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Rhode Island
Heidi Brinig |
Heidi Brinig, a true visionary, has changed the practice of public child welfare by creating an innovative museum-based experiential teaming experience to build parenting skills and to allow visitation between parents and children separated due to abuse/neglect/dependency. Ms. Brinig, who had worked with a child welfare population of children separated from their parents at a teaching hospital in Pennsylvania, identified the potential opportunity for an experiential teaming experience to be based in a museum, wondering if parental skill building could be enhanced in such a learning modality. Together with Janice O'Donnell, Executive Director of the Rhode Island's Children's Museum, she nurtured this revolutionary idea and proceeded to convince funding sources and the public child welfare agency that this idea could and would work. The program proposal included holding visitation at the Children's Museum instead of in visiting rooms in large municipal buildings. One component of the visits had Ms. Brinig meeting with the family to develop goals for each visit and measures of success. These visits would take place weekly over a period of twelve weeks. Ms. Brinig would accompany the family through the Museum and take advantage of teachable moments, i.e., for educating parents about child development, new and different ways of handling troublesome behaviors, and experiences for fun with their children. With the families knowledge, the Agency would receive periodic reports on their progress and recommendations for the likelihood of safely achieving permanency. The "Families Together" Program," initiated at the Children's Museum in 1992, continues to serve approximately 5O families a year with a staff of 10 and a budget now totaling $348,000. Ms. Brinig's creative idea has become so successful as to have been recognized by the Department of Health and Human Services Children's Bureau in Washington as a "Promising Practice" for child welfare nationally.