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Meet You at the Cafe

Parental resilience, the ability to constructively cope with and bounce back from stressors and challenges, is a key skill that prevents child abuse and neglect. Parent leadership is the cornerstone of resilience. When parents take the lead to find meaningful connections and information that build on their family’s strengths, cycles of family violence are broken, families strengthen, and children become more successful.

Community Cafés, a powerful new community-based initiative, have recently swept the nation starting here in Washington State. Through guided conversations, Cafés strengthen families by connecting caregivers of all types—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and neighbors—with a support network that increases their resilience to stress, connects them to resources, and builds relationships that keep families from isolation, a risk factor for abuse and neglect.

So far, Cafés have served over 500 children and parents throughout Washington. Cafés gather parents in comfortable, culturally-embracing ways in high schools, churches, elementary schools, homeless shelters, and homes. “Everything we do is in partnership,” explained Robin Higa, founder and Community Café Leadership Team member. “No parent leader does it alone.” Cafés are particularly successful among Latino parents. As Robin shares, “we need all families in our community to feel that they can make a difference, that there is someone who cares about them, and that we are all in the same boat.”

Children’s Trust Foundation invested in Community Cafés last year and this year has made Cafés the cornerstone of our Parent Leadership Initiative, working in partnership with Foundation for Early Learning and Council for Children & Families. We are eager to watch this movement grow throughout Washington State.

Click here to learn more about the exciting work of a Community Café in a neighborhood near you. And help support the expansion of this work by making a gift dedicated to Community Cafés.