Children's Place fosters families
NORTH EASTHAM -- Mary Sutton sits at a small round table at Cape Cod Children’s Place with two women, who, she says are more than friends. They are like family to her. She tips back in her chair and laughs as she remembers a parenting meeting she once attended here.
“I couldn’t rinse her hair without her screaming,” Sutton says of her now 5-year-old daughter Antonia. “Do you remember what you said to me? You said: ‘'Could you try goggles?’ ”
Cindy Horgan, executive director of the Children’s Place, nods with a smile. “I do remember that,” she says.
“Did the goggles work?” asks Elizabeth Aldred, grants and advocacy coordinator.
“Actually, I think they did. I look back at that and think, really? I thought that was a problem?” Sutton, breaks into laughter again. “I don’t know what I would have done without you guys. I don’t know what I will do without you.”
With the end of the preschool year fast approaching, Sutton is also looking at the end of her daughter’s time at the Children’s Place. Atonia, who first entered the Children’s Place network at the Sea-Babies infant and toddlers program in Wellfleet and graduated to the Eastham preschool program - will begin kindergarten next year. Sutton tears up a bit at the thought of it.
Over more than three years, Sutton says her connection here has meant much more than having a place to find strategies for bath time with a slippery baby. Sutton talks at length, passionately, about how Antonia’s time at the Children’s Place allowed her to have the job she needed. The people involved with the organization, other parents, teachers and people like Aldred and Horgan, have given her emotional support and tools, which helped her as single parent. And then, when she met her partner, the two of them found resources, classes and advice for what to do as the dynamic of family life shifted from mother and child to parents and child. All of this, she says, helps her family flourish.
Today Sutton works at Nauset Pet Services, a small, locally-owned business.
“I’m very fortunate to work someplace where everyone is so understanding,” she says. “If [Antonia] is sick, they tell me to just go. I think if I were working for a big store owned by a big corporation, things wouldn’t be so easy.”
Sutton’s is one the hundreds of families and thousands of stories connected to Cape Cod Children’s Place.
This year, Cape Cod Children’s Place is celebrating its 20-year anniversary as a mainstay for families of the Lower and Outer Cape community. Horgan, who has worked in the field of parenting and family education for decades, calls her work here a dream come true.
Parents' vision
Aldred, who points out she’s been sharing what Cape Cod Children’s Place is about since before it was a reality, says what she admires most about the organization is its true grassy roots.
“The first time I ever heard about the Cape Cod Children’s Place, was when I wrote a story about it for The Cape Codder,” Aldred says, where she worked before coming to the Children's Place. The idea, undoubtedly like many others on Cape Cod, was born on a beach when a group of parents sitting in a circle in their folding chairs, feet buried in sand on a hot summer’s day asked, wouldn’t it be nice if there were a child care center in town?
The original vision for Cape Cod Children’s Place was to build a center for children from the towns Brewster, Chatham, Eastham, Harwich, Orleans, Provincetown, Truro and Wellfleet. Construction of the building was cobbled together through a state grant to be managed through the town of Eastham, which provided the land on which it was built.
Cape Cod Children’s Place opened its doors in 1995. The Family Support Program began in 1998 and the Early Childhood Resource Center was created in 1999.
Working in a unique collaborative effort In 2006 with Seaman’s Bank, which recognized the connection between child care services and employee retention rates, the Sea-Babies satellite center was opened at the Wellfleet Senior Center.
“There is nothing like what we do organically,” Aldred says. “Parents identified what was missing at every step of the way, and those were the programs that evolved. Those [programs] have not gone away. Others have been added. Now, with the social media, other connections and services have happened: there is a Lower Cape parents’ Facebook page. We didn’t start this - the parents did. They’re getting information out there. It’s amazing to see.”
Unique issues
Horgan agrees “amazing” is a good word to describe how the Outer Cape community works. She grew up in Dennisport. Prior to coming to Cape Cod Children’s Place, she worked in the Mid-Cape area.
“I was a foreigner in this land,” she says, adding that when she told friends she was going to work in Eastham, they kept telling her the Lower and Outer Cape were “a lot different.
“I thought to myself, how different can it be? It’s 17 miles away,” she says. “I learned pretty quickly that once you get past the rotary, it truly is a different place. The rules are different here.”
What sets this region apart from its Mid- and Upper- Cape cousins, Horgan says, is the “deep sense of ownership people have for this area. There’s a real identity in who you are here.”
Aldred says commitment to the community has been a key ingredient to the organization’s success.
“People have solid roots here,” she explains. “So many of the people who live here today, grew up here. People who come to work here have stayed. There is just a sense of belonging in this place that is essential to the work that we do.”
As committed as families are to their Lower and Outer Cape identities, there is also an isolation here during the winters months. Housing is expensive, rentals are often seasonal, jobs are few, and raising a family remains one of the area’s greatest challenges. This was true 20 years ago and remains so today.
“What’s hidden here, I think, is just what a slippery slope it is for families to survive,” Horgan says.
Aldred agrees: “It is a seasonal, low income economy. The insecurity of the whole thing can be very, very difficult.
What the families and staff of Cape Cod Children’s Place do can be as hidden as the challenges here, but it is often “the small thing that tips the balance” and makes it possible. Horgan adds.
“If a dad falls off a ladder and is out of work; if your hours get cut back at [a convenience store job], we have an emergency child care fund. We can put together a bag of groceries. I’ve seen this community help in so many little ways that make the difference,” she says.
This year’s 20th anniversary celebration has given Cape Cod Children’s Place the platform from which to launch a fund-raising campaign needed to fund improvements and repairs to both the original North Eastham building and the center in Wellfleet. North Eastham needs repairs to the roof, siding and floors.
"The greatest challenges are funding always because we are a non-profit and dependant on grants and donations." Horgan says. "Our only stream of income is in our tuition for our education and childcare programs, which we run at a loss because to have families pay higher would be unrealistic for them. Our other challenge is space we could benefit from a larger space but we work with what we have."
The campaign goal is $50,000. An anonymous donor has offered a challenge pledge of $20,000. So far, Horgan says, donations from many individuals and local businesses is helping to meet the challenge pledge.
The anniversary campaign committee is made up of many names familiar to those who have worked with Cape Cod Children’s Place over the years: Sally Macort, Lindsay Cole, Kate Macaulay, Lorraine Norgeot, Anne Sigsbee, Sally Digges, Chris O’Riordan, Mary Ryan, and Horgan.
Among the fund-raising events is a series of parties to help introduce “new friends in the community” to Cape Cod Children’s Place. One such event is this evening with a three-course dinner hosted by the Captain Linnell House. Dinner is $60 per person and is tax deductible. Another event is the upcoming May 9 Rock Harbor Hop, a “bar hopping benefit.”
In September, the “real” birth date of Cape Cod Children’s Place, Aldred and Horgan say plans are in the works for a reunion.
“We’re hoping lots of families will come back here to help us reflect,” Horgan says. “It will be great to look at our beginnings and see what those families are doing today.”
Doors opened: 1995
Mission: Resource and advocacy center for families of Lower and Outer Cape. “We like to say this is one-stop shopping here for family needs,” says Elizabeth Aldred, grants and advocacy coordinator.
Services: Child care, connecting families to other programs, services; referrals, links for families on the Lower and Outer Cape to other family services, postpartum support for mothers; parenting workshops for parents and a “Dads” programs for fathers. Free play-groups and activities for children year-round.
Financial assistance: The organization provides financial assistance through the Lower Cape Emergency Child Care Fund, a program to assist with short-term childcare costs for families in emergency situations; and the Provincetown Family Resource, help for Provincetown children through the John A. Henry Trust. Tuition aid is available and state childcare vouchers are accepted.
Building: The North Eastham building on Balwic Road off Nauset Road houses a resource center that includes a lending library of many books and other materials that are made available to early childhood teachers at public and private preschool programs, in-home family childcare providers, playgroup leaders, parents and others working with young children.
Inspiration: What has shaped the programming, from the first child care classes, to Charlotte Fyfe’s famous family “red van show,” which took care for young families to their doorsteps to the opening of a new center in Wellfleet for working families, are “always” family needs, Executive Director Cindy Horgan says. “This is a community effort. We partner with families. We walk with families. Everything we try to do is about the need to empower families and give them strength.”