CFPC Guest Chat Transcript - January 23, 2007
Topic: “Starting a Parent Support Group”
Guest Speaker: Terry West, Support Group Leader
HAND of Angels, Inc.,
Moderator: Our Guest Speaker today is Terry West from Hand of Angels, Inc., and we are here to discuss how to start and maintain a parent support group. Terry, please go ahead and start us off by introducing yourself and telling us a bit about what you took into consideration when starting Hand of Angels.
I'm Terry West, I'm a grandmother of a grandchild with Cerebral Palsy who is 7 years old, and I have a nonprofit corporation called Hand of Angels. We work with the exceptional community and we provide resources and support in a support group in the Desoto County area.
My theory of starting a support group is thinking about Who, What, When, and Where.
Who means - who are you looking at having a support group for? For example, either for mothers of children with exceptional kids or you look to see around your surrounding areas what would be good for families or you can also look if your child has a disability, you can look at the different disabilities in the area and see if that's the best way to go.
What - would be the best place to have your support group meetings? In a library? Or in a park? Or even in a church setting or you can look at a school setting or also you can look at maybe going to a bowling alley and having a "Family Fun Day" with the group.
If you're looking at just mothers, you could have a Mothers' Night Out, at a restaurant.
We have our group meeting usually once a month and it's at the Last Chapter Bookstore, it's just a chance for the parents to sit and chat and have a cup of coffee.
When - would be when you hold your meeting and you can send invitations out and have like a get-together in a park. You can have a questionnaire as to what times would be best, when they would be available for events...
Where - we kind of covered already with the park, playground, church, etc.
Q: How do you let parents know you are there?
I go out to the Back-to-School fairs. We also send out flyers to the local churches. We send out flyers to the Readiness Coalition because they work with the preschools.
We contact Head Start, and the Redlands Christian Migrant Association (RCMA) to reach other parents in the area. We also bring flyers to the Health Department and the small newspapers in some of the rural areas, or large ones in urban areas.
Q: Does someone donate money to you to cover postage?
Yes. We do fundraisers like yard sales. Also we found someone who supplies honey and so we're selling honey as a fundraiser. And we also do dinners we have a soup supper or chili supper. One of the local churches lets us use their kitchen, or a local chapter of a club or organization might allow the use of their facilities.
Q: Do the organizations that you go to provide you with a mailing list of families, or do the organizations fund mailings to the families they serve?
They do the mailings to the families that they serve. If they have a newsletter, they put our events in there. With the Privacy Act, they cannot provide contact information.
Q: Are you a one-woman-show, or do you have volunteers helping? If so, how did you recruit them?
There are two of us - Stacy and I are the basis of the organization, but we have parent volunteers that we have met with the parents and worked with their children. We have at least ten volunteers. So we help a parent and then we ask them if they would like to volunteer. If you need volunteers, the best place to find volunteers is at the high school. Students will volunteer because you can provide them with a credit certificate and they can put it in their file for scholarships / credit. If you look online you can Google volunteer organizations for your local area and you can also contact them.
Q: Do volunteers have a background check and fingerprinted?
Sometimes, yes. For our summer camp, we had volunteers fingerprinted because they were working closely with the children.
Q: Can you tell us how you started up the summer camp program, and what kind of camp it is?
We started up by getting with Desoto Parks and Recreation we brought it to the Director of P&R and said that Desoto doesn't have a recreation area for inclusion of children with disabilities in summer camp. We presented the idea of an "Inclusion Summer Camp." We worked with them and got donations for the adaptable equipment through local businesses and Desoto P&R provided the building and the pavilion where we held the Summer Camp. It was for a half a day for one week. Local businesses donated refreshments, like McDonald's donated cheeseburgers and cokes, and Winn-Dixie donated donuts for refreshments.
We had theme days and G-Whiz from Sarasota came over and gave a presentation of science experiments to the kids. We had Home Depot come out and do a building presentation of kits (cars, boats, all kinds of things), and we talked to the Health Department and they came in and taught the kids about washing their hands, teeth-brushing, and nutrition.
Parks & Recreation fingerprinted the volunteers who were not previously fingerprinted (such as school personnel).
Q: When you started all of this, did you and Stacy call and make appointments to talk to community leaders and businesses to get their buy-in?
We wrote a letter of donation and we went in and gave it to EVERYBODY. We went in to talk to people face-to-face. We got a lot of support from our community that way.
When you go in to places, have a donation letter and a flyer and provide an explanation of what the mission is, what you're going to be doing and how you're going to do it.
Be prepared going in, with a presentation for the person, and show them, let them know that the money is going straight to the children, to benefit the children. Right now we're raising money for an Inclusion Playground in the city of Arcadia. We're selling hands. We're decorating wooden hands to put around the fence at the playground. The hand will have the child's first name on it and their decorations. We also have bricks, where someone could donate and dedicate their brick to whoever they want. And then we're doing benches - and that's the same thing, there will be a plaque to put a name on.
Q: How are the Hispanic families responding to your services and support?
Really good! We have worked with a couple of Hispanic families. I've been wishing I speak Spanish. I have a couple Catholic charities representatives who translate for us.
Q: Was it hard to become a non-profit and get your tax-exemption?
No, it's not that hard. It's not that hard to fill out the information, you do it mostly piece-by-piece (and if anyone would like to contact me for assistance, I'd be happy to help).
The first thing you need to do is get your Florida Incorporation; that's on the Florida Business website. They need to have a mission statement for the nonprofit and bylaws and at least a couple of board members. We made sure we had four board members to start. For the 501-c-3, if the organization is not planning to net more than $25,000, then the application fee is only $300. Otherwise, it's $750. Corporation fees at the state level are only about $70 and you have to pay the corporation fees every year and that's $61.25.
Q: How long did it take for your group to "take-off"?
We started back in May and we've been taking off since! It depends on how many people you have - the two of us have just been going constantly for the past six months. We've been doing other outreach like the County Fair booth. We've been down to Ft. Myers to the Walk for Autism. We went out and talked, did an in-service program for a pre-school, we're a part of the Inclusion Meeting in Port Charlotte they have a meeting once a month. Most of the schools now are having Exceptional Student Parent Meetings and so we're getting involved in those.
A friend of mine, Nancy started up a support group in Port Charlotte and she does a bowling group once a month.
There's a support group in Ft. Myers that's for the families of children with Cerebral Palsy.
There's a group in Bradenton that has a mother's night out.
We're in contact with these other groups and we share each other's flyers, which is another great strategy for outreach.
Q: Do you have child-care for meetings?
It's good to have child care if you have family meetings, yes. Sometimes you can contact your local high school or use boy scouts or girl scouts as volunteers (with appropriate adult supervision of course)... unless there are special medical needs. We always come up with arts & crafts or activities for the children - that's what's nice about a library, too, because they have "Story Time" and that way the parents can be close by, but the kids can be at Storybook time while the parents are having their meeting.
Q: What day and time works for your support group?
Our support group seems to be working having the meeting from 12 to 1:00 pm where they can sit there and have lunch, at the bookshop. They can just talk about everyday things that happen or funny things that happen with their kids, not always about their children's disabilities. You'd be surprised at what they talk about! :) That's once a month on a Wednesday for an hour. Attendance has been really good we usually have between five and ten people.
Q: What about parents who work - has that been a problem?
That's where it helps to do a questionnaire about what times work for the families in your group. In a small rural area, you'll find that a lot of the parents work shift work. And if they can't be there, that's why sometimes we have a fun day out in the park like on a Saturday, to pull in parents who would not be able to attend the Wednesday meetings.
You can have a fun day from 1-4 pm. We have activities for the kids, with hotdogs, hamburgers, chips, etc.
Q: Are the family fun days well attended?
Yes, well, we've done one so far because it's gotten cold. We plan on doing them quarterly. For our first one, only five people attended but we're expecting more attendance as the weather heats up.
If they are in a city you might approach a place like Chuck E. Cheese or a museum and have an event there, maybe make arrangements to have a small fee for parents to attend.
Q: In your experience, what is it that parents are looking for in a support group?
Support groups need to look at their surrounding area and see what works for the area where they live. Somebody to talk to! Some resources and information where they can get help basically they've talked about they are looking for another parent who has gone through the same thing they're going through, especially a younger parent.
Also an outlet where they can be an adult - and find adult conversation!
Moderator: We have about five minutes left now. We are going to stop taking questions and give Terry the last five minutes to share her thoughts with us. Thank you for participating, and please don't forget to fill out the evaluation (below).
Terry West: To a new support group leader, I would say - Don't give up! If you have your first meeting and only two people show up, it's a start! Sit with those first two attendees and pull them into decision-making - which will lead to buy-in and getting their commitment as volunteers.
I just would like to thank you all for being here and if you have any other questions, feel free to contact me at terryw@hand-of-angels.org and I'd be happy to provide additional assistance.
Thank you so much, Terry!
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