The Nest Program
The Nest Program provides support for families struggling with child management issues either due to a parent or child’s mental health, family trauma or other stressful circumstances that make parenting difficult. Our program matches a volunteer parent mentor with a family. This trained mentor helps parents identify child and parent strengths, grow their social and parenting skills, learn behavioral and emotional de-escalation techniques and connect parents with community resources.
What a Nest Volunteer Mentor Can Do:
- Provide emotional support when things are challenging
- Model and coach de-escalation skills, crisis intervention and self-care
- Offer alternative discipline ideas and techniques
- Engage in supportive phone calls
- Set family goals and host activities
- Build positive relationship skills
- Help parents identify strengths and weaknesses
- Connect parents with needed resources
- Assist with school support
- Help schedule and organize special needs for children and adults
- Trained mentors work with a family for a minimum of one year. A mentor might volunteer 2-10 hours per month, depending on the needs of the family. In their role, a mentor is expected to consistently provide both educational and emotional support. Activities depend on the plan developed with the family.
For more information about The Nest Program, contact Carolyn Washington at carolyn@mnpreventabuse.org.