The pilot project in Edmonton demonstrated that the Mother Goose program model has appealed to a wide audience including disadvantaged parents. Disadvantaged is used to describe parents who are characterized by any of the following: loneliness, isolation, over-burdened, “at-risk” and/or poor.

We often think of disadvantaged as being a stereotype of the poor, perhaps aboriginal single parent who faces many barriers to good health outcomes. However, participants in the Edmonton programs included middle-class parents from two-parent families with one or more other children, who were looking for a resource for themselves and their babies or young children. Some were feeling lonely or isolated, while others were interested in connecting with other people with young children. In some cases, older children were much older, and this was seen as a support for starting over when parenting a new baby or young child.

Program providers have acknowledged that the “target group may be those who come.” Some program deliverers described the program as a “great equalizer,” collecting all participants by the common thread of being a caregiver.

Program Access
Access to Rhymes That Bind was identified as a barrier by some participants in the evaluation. Some sponsors changed location part way through the program to better accommodate the number of interested people, only to find that the new location brought a new group of participants. In addition to physical access, “emotional” access was identified as being important. Program planners must recognize and acknowledge that different people respond differently to different locations and to different sponsors for reasons having to do with “how they feel about them.” Thus diversity of locations and sponsors is probably important.

References

Benard, B. (1995) Fostering resilience in children. ERIC Digest, University of Illinois.

Frampton, A. (1996). The Rhymes that Bind. Equinox 88, July/August.

Goelman, H. & Pence, A. (1994). Play, talk, literacy and the ecology of family daycare. In H. Goelman & E. Vineberg-Jacobs, (Eds.), Children's play in childcare settings. Albany, NY: :State of New York Press.

Hayden, R. & Alix-Hayden, K. (1996) Speaking with one voice: Community health professionals and literacy learning. Family and Community Health ,19(1), 83-88.

Hoffman, Ken. (1994). The strengthening community health program: Lessons for community development. In A. Pederson, (Ed.), Health promotion in Canada: Provincial, national and international perspectives. Canada: W.B. Saunders.

Kies, D. A., Rodriguez , I. & Granato, F. (1993) Oral language development through storytelling: An approach to emergent literacy. Reading Improvement, 30, 43-48.

National Crime Prevention Council. (1995). Resiliency in young children: A fact sheet. Prepared by the Prevention and Children Committee. Ottawa, Ontario.

Parent-Child Mother Goose Program. (1994). Teacher training manual. Toronto, ON: Parent Child Mother Goose Program.

Parent-Child Mother Goose Program. (1995). Health promotion in early childhood: Fact Sheet. Toronto, ON: Parent Child Mother Goose Program.