Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery

On April 28, Social Venture Partners-Minnesota (SVP) and Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery co-hosted a breakfast forum regarding the Crisis Nursery’s new, innovative and leading edge Nursery Way childcare protocols.  50 SVP partners and Crisis Nursery supporters attended the forum.  The following is a brief overview of the event:

What was the main message of the forum?

Michele Fallon, LICSW and Dr. Anne Gearity, two leading experts on working with children who have experienced trauma, detailed the science behind the Crisis Nursery’s new protocols and explained how the Crisis Nursery can have a significant impact in the lives of the children that it shelters.

How has this research informed the Crisis Nursery's new protocols?

The protocols focus on the reality that most, if not all of the children that stay at the Crisis Nursery have experienced some form of crisis, if not trauma.  A child’s ability to handle frustration, distress, and other emotions, even for a short time, may be compromised when that child experiences a crisis. Chronic stress also interrupts a child’s possibility of new learning and development.

Childcare staff build opportunities for each child to learn new tools to help them build resiliency in the face of chronic stress and trauma. Evidence-based research has demonstrated that children need to have the ability to self-sooth, to ask an adult for help, and to accept redirection.

Dr. Art Rolnick also addressed the group, what did he contribute to the event?

Dr. Rolnick, formerly of the Federal Reserve, now with the U of M's Humphrey Institute, capped the forum by detailing the need for such services for children in the community. He pointed out how investments in children from pre-natal to Kindergarten can produce annualized returns of over 15% in terms of dollars saved by preventing problems that arise later in a child’s life if that child does not have proper supports.