This essay was adapted from a post posted on Medium.
About nine months ago, Dara told me she was interested in bringing her mother and nephew from Syria to the United States and that she needed help doing so. She had immigrated to Evanston, Illinois, from Syria five years ago with her husband and five children and wanted to be reunited with her family.
I wanted to help, but didn’t know where to start. As a home visitor in the federally funded Head Start/Early Head Start program, my goal is to help families develop and achieve goals related to the education of their young children. I work with Dara’s four-year-old daughter, Naya, but I support her entire family. (I have changed their names in this essay to protect their privacy, and they have consented to have their story published.) As their home visitor, I provide resources, connections, and experiences to their family and the other families I serve.
Over the years, in addition to providing lessons and activities to the children I work with, I have also helped families obtain food and diapers, fill out school registration forms, and find affordable housing—but this task was new to me.
I decided to start by researching the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services website. I read up a little about the process, then printed out the required documents and contacted my organization’s Arabic interpreter for translation assistance.
Dara had to fill out an I-730 form (Application for Refugee/Asylum Seeker). I looked at the form myself, and even as a native English speaker, it was daunting. I knew Dara was even more in the dark. We worked for months to gather the information she needed. When we finally finished the voluminous document a few weeks ago, I gave Dara two huge envelopes and explained that she would need to take them to the post office, weigh them for shipping, and mail them.
“I don’t know how to do that,” she told me.
Dara had never been to a U.S. Post Office before. We decided to plan a field trip with her children so they could learn about mailing letters. I prepared them as best I could by telling them what to expect. I couldn’t predict everything, but that conversation helped us set the path to success. On the day of the trip, Dara and her children had a new experience—one that helped them all grow. It takes a lot of courage to step out of your comfort zone, and the best part was that her children were there as their mother tried something new while advocating for her family.
I have been an early childhood educator for 25 years. In that time, I have been a teacher, a preschool owner and manager, and now a home visitor. My background in early childhood education has given me insight into the critical nature of this work, as has my personal experience as a mother navigating a difficult transition into parenthood, breastfeeding a colicky baby, and coming to terms with the reality that maternity leave reduced our family’s income. Looking back, I wish I had the reassurance and support of a home visitor.
How home visiting programs support families
As part of my work as a home visitor, I serve 11 children and their families, including Naya’s. All of these families speak a language other than English at home, and eight of the families are immigrants to the United States. During my weekly visits with each family, I provide parents with resources and opportunities to learn and practice skills that will help their young children develop. The idea is that parents and caregivers are a child’s first teachers, and I support them in being the best teachers they can be. Participating in home visiting programs can support families with health and well-being, and in my experience, these programs are particularly effective with immigrant families.
When I visit, I teach developmentally appropriate lessons to Naya, who is fluent in Arabic and English. Like many children learning two languages, she is a little behind in learning the names of letters and numbers, but as I have assured many parents, bilingualism is so beneficial for brain development and she will catch up with her monolingual classmates.
Over the past year, in addition to organizing these activities for Naya and processing travel documents, I have helped Dara and her family make great progress toward other goals. By working with one of our partner resource groups, the family of seven was able to find a new place to live and move from a two-bedroom apartment to a five-bedroom home. After the move, I was able to help Dara enroll her older children in a new school system. The process was almost as difficult as completing the I-730 form, but together we got it done.
Every family has their own goals and needs, so my work differs depending on who I’m supporting. Sometimes I’m educating parents about their child’s development and safety, sometimes I’m providing resources to help them engage with their children. And sometimes I’m helping them navigate challenges they face as a family, whether it’s finding emergency funding when their SNAP benefits are delayed, learning a new bus route to school, or, most recently, getting to the post office.
The key is to expand access
Research shows that investing in early childhood education has huge benefits for children and families. And there is evidence that home visiting programs are invaluable for parents like Dara. But these programs are consistently underfunded and understaffed. The impact of home visitors on a child’s development and a family’s well-being is enormous, but access is limited. There are not enough resources to make them available to every child who needs and is eligible.
We can improve access for children and their families by creating greater awareness of the benefits these programs provide to children, families and society. We can advocate for increased federal funding and continued funding so that every family who wants to benefit from this service can have immediate access instead of being placed on a waiting list that can take years.
In the spirit of strengthening families, a solution was proposed during a recent focus group I attended for home visitors in Illinois. The idea was to create a path for parents participating in home visiting programs to receive training in child development, goal setting, and documentation so they could become home visitors themselves. Such an approach would require oversight, support, and funding, but it could increase the well-being of the original family by providing training, improving financial stability, and strengthening connections throughout the community—and it could help others exponentially.
Imagine if Dara helped people register their children for school or take them to the post office. Did she need guidance and support? Of course we all need that. But she would be providing her invaluable experience to families, especially those new to this country, and that would bring her closer to her personal goals.
