TWENTY YEARS AGO, in 2006, Mary Curtis-Gramley started Family Nurturing Center with four children and the vision of healing families to break the cycle of abuse. It began on the foundational belief that a positive bond between parent and child during the earliest years is the most powerful protective factor in a child’s life. Because when the bond between parent and child is strong, parents feel capable, families become resilient, and abuse and neglect are prevented.
Statistics and Facts
REPORTED BY OREGON’S CHILD WELFARE DIVISION
SOURCE: NATIONAL CHILDREN’S ALLIANCE
We provide a way to:
- Break the generational cycles of abuse and neglect
- Ensure children are safe and families stay together
- Relieve the financial burden on the state
Helping families heal and gain economic independence also saves Oregon tax dollars
The upstream nature of our work reduces expenditures in child welfare, foster care, criminal justice, and more:
- Foster Care Costs: Foster care costs the state $28,000 per year per child.
- Youth Incarceration Costs: The state pays $110,000 per year to incarcerate a child in a youth correctional facility.
OUR IMPACT
Recent studies show that of the families receiving support from a Relief Nursery:
- 95% of children require no foster care.
- Of those already in foster care, children exit the system twice as quickly as those not receiving services. Between 2008-2010, the average number of days spent in foster care was reduced from 394 to 179—a difference of 215 days or $8,300 per child in foster care reimbursements.
- Families who receive our support experience a 25% reduction in measurable risk of child maltreatment.
- The percentage of parents with gainful employment increased from 18% at intake to 32% after 24 months of Relief Nursery support.
About Relief Nurseries
Relief Nurseries are the only programs of their kind in Oregon. We use proven strategies to prevent child maltreatment, break generational patterns of abuse and neglect, reduce the impact of childhood trauma, and support the development of stable, strong families who are able to keep their children safe and thriving at home.
Families are selected for our programs based on their risk for potential abuse and foster care—not merely the financial resources of a family.
Our two-generation approach places the family at the center of our prevention services.
Our Model for Healing and Development
The Relief Nursery model addresses the three principles identified by the Harvard University Center on the Developing Child as most profoundly affecting brain development and helping children heal from trauma:
Reducing sources of stress
Supporting responsive relationships
Strengthening core life skills
Using a data-driven approach, we support families in developing the 5 Protective Factors, putting our resources where they will be most effective.