Hope on the horizon
Books, games, toys and early-education specialists make an enormous difference for children who live in homeless shelters. Sue Heilman '75 oversees an agency that provides all that, and something even more important: an embrace for the whole family.
BY SUSAN SACCOCCIA
Most families cherish their children's first words and steps. But if a family spends its nights in a car, campground or motel room, the joys of childhood can be lost in the shuffle.
Nationwide, about 1.35 million children are homeless. In Massachusetts alone, nearly 80,000 children lack a home address. Fifty percent of them are under the age of 6. While most live in makeshift circumstances, some homeless families with preschoolers make it into the state's family shelters. Some toddlers arrive mute from lack of interaction or barely able to stand after long confinement in strollers or car seats.
Surprisingly, many of the state's shelters offer preschoolers more than a roof overhead. Children find bright playrooms filled with books, games, toys and climbing structures designed just for them. Greeting and guiding the preschoolers are friendly volunteers trained to help them develop their motor, cognitive and social skills through the power of educational play.
These "Playspaces" are among the services of Horizons for Homeless Children (HHC), an independent nonprofit organization that has grown under the watchful eye of Sue Heilman '75 into a national model for serving homeless children.
HHC provides homeless preschoolers with nurturing recreation and early education. It also offers parents the education, job training and counseling needed to put families back on their feet. In short, HHC's philosophy could best be described as helping children by stabilizing the whole family.
"There's a stigma attached to homelessness," says Heilman, who has served as the organization's executive director since 1992. "But of all the parents I've come to know here, not one intended to become homeless."
Under Heilman's leadership, HHC has grown from an organization with one part-time staff member and a $40,000 budget into a $7.5 million operation with 100 staff. "Every two years, we've doubled in size, adding a Community Children's Center (CCC) or more Playspaces," says Heilman.
When she joined HHC, she decided to go to the source for information. "I began by sitting down with the mothers and asking them what they needed," says Heilman, a tall, athletic woman with a warm, straightforward manner. The parents told her that they wanted a good education for their children as well as services for themselves to gain independence, including parenting workshops, job training, and preparation for the high school equivalency test.
The result of those conversations is reflected in HHC today. The agency operates Playspaces in 132 of the state's family shelters and recruits and trains the 850 volunteer Playspace Activity Leaders (PALs) who staff these sites each week. HHC also runs three Community Children's Centers (CCCs) in Boston, multi-service sites that serve a total of 175 preschoolers and their parents each weekday. At each CCC, children receive licensed childcare from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. while their parents work toward self-sufficiency classes and counseling. To date, the CCCs have served more than 1,000 children and about 750 parents. About 75 percent of these families now live in their own homes. And sharing its expertise both locally and nationwide, HHC has become a leading advocate and educator on behalf of homeless children and families through its programs in public policy and training/technical assistance.
Such services are not often within the reach of shelters. "A shelter is better than the street or a car," Heilman says. "Shelters are often bare-bones operations that are run on a shoestring by underpaid and overworked staff. Their job is crisis management.
"The families arrive in crisis," she continues. "Siblings share a small bedroom with their parents. Children see and hear what they should not. All the time, Mom is looking for housing, work or school, and in between, doing her shelter chores. The parents are stuck. It's hard to move forward. If we're going to help these families, we can't do it in a half-baked way."
Quality is a priority at HHC, which has created a specialized curriculum as well as best practices in the recruitment, training and retention of staff, teachers and volunteers. Designed by early-childhood specialists, its sites orchestrate lighting, colors and furnishings into environments that are crafted from the ground up to nurture the child's experience so they can grow and develop normally.
"One might think that even a mediocre program is better than nothing," Heilman says. "But for homeless children, poor quality can add to the trauma. For example, if different teachers come and go, that represents more losses to the child. If parents don't feel that their children are safe, then they will have a harder time getting to other issues. "A family that's fallen apart can't move forward on its own," she adds. "We put together people and resources to help families create a better life."
Horizons for Homeless Children co-founders and board members Roger Brown and Linda Mason admire the skill, determination and energy that Sue and her organization put into developing, financing, staffing and running each new site. "Despite roadblocks every step of the way and all sorts of bureaucratic dead ends, Sue has amazing tenacity," says Brown, who is the president of Berklee College of Music and a Wheaton trustee. "She goes after opportunities day after day with a spirit of optimism and she's built a staff and board with the same passion and dedication. For Sue, HHC is not a job or a career. It is her life's work."
Heilman describes her work-everything from daily challenges to testifying on behalf of homeless families before congressional committees-matter-of-factly: "I like to see what there is to do, figure out how to do it, and do it."
Heilman attributes her can-do approach to her preference for "hands-on, real-world challenges." She discovered this inclination at Wheaton, where she relished playing three seasons of sports- hockey, basketball and lacrosse-as well as defending a chronically under funded but worthy agency in Professor of Political Science Jay Goodman's "Public Administration" course. Coincidentally, HHC board member Deirdre "Deedee" Briggs Phillips '78, managing director at Putnam Investments, recalls taking the same course three years later.
A government major who attends every class reunion, she credits her Wheaton education for encouraging her career in civic engagement-work that, at heart, relies on relationships. She regards political science professors Darlene Boroviak, David Vogel and Goodman as mentors.
Now in its 30th year, the "Public Administration" course plunges students into the fray of democratic decision-making. Assuming the roles of senators and representatives, lobbyists, and officials of the Department of the Interior, students spend a semester hammering out a budget for the National Park Service. "As in the real world, there's never enough money for causes of merit," says Professor Goodman. "Students have to resolve their competing interests and cooperatively reach decisions. They learn that they can do things on their own that are hard to do."
The course whetted Heilman's appetite for public policy. "I remember my role as Secretary of the Interior as if it were yesterday," she says.
After graduating, Heilman worked in several jobs, all the while volunteering in a program that helped single mothers in public housing learn such skills as child care, budgeting and car repair. Then, as director of the Thompson Island Education Center, she found a position that suited her interests in social justice and alternative education. She spent a decade stabilizing and expanding this environmental education and adventure program for students from inner-city schools.
Hired by Horizons for Homeless Children to enlarge what was then a fledgling organization, Heilman brought to this challenge her confidence, conviction-and knack at turning like-minded people into a community.
"Over the past 15 years, we've gone from a board of four or five people with little experience running a nonprofit or raising money to a board of 35 who make everything possible," she says. "We welcome the involvement of many different sectors and individuals. The support people are providing is not just financial. Ours is a community that builds on itself. HHC funnels their energy and ideas out to homeless children and families."
Such support is urgently needed to reach more homeless children and families. Heilman points out that in Massachusetts alone, about 38,000 children less than 6 years of age live "under the radar"- without even the minimal stability offered by family shelters. "The mission of HHC is compelling, and the need-huge," she says. "We expand our reach by replicating proven models-building more Playspaces and Community Children's Centers-and also by moving into new territory."
Horizons for Homeless Children counts a number of Wheaton graduates as supporters. Among the first was Elissa Shore Pototsky '94, whose one-month internship at HHC turned into a full-time job as volunteer coordinator. She found an influential mentor in Heilman. "Sue brought backbone to Horizons for Homeless Children," says Pototsky, now a clinical social worker, "and she helped me learn how to interact well with other people, a foundation that has stayed with me."
Long time HHC supporters include Polly Bartlett Bryson '79, a partner at Terra Nova LLC; Susan Stampler Paresky '68, senior vice president for development at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a former Wheaton trustee; Tami Nason '81, a senior vice president of Charlesbank Capital Partners; former PAL Emi Fujiwara '02, now pursuing her RN degree; and Dancing Deer Bakery co-founder and CEO Trish Karter '77. Karter made her support for HHC part of her business by launching the "Sweet Home Cookie" program, which donates 35 percent of the proceeds from cookie sales to HHC and other nonprofits serving homeless families.
Among the new ventures of HHC is advocacy to marshal state and federal support for programs that reduce family homelessness and provide care for homeless children.
"Funding has been mainly from the private sector," says Briggs Phillips, chair of the program and policy committee of HHC. "But family homelessness is a public-sector problem. Homeless families don't have a voice. They were invisible to policy makers and the public. Over the past three years, we've increased awareness of family homelessness and laid the groundwork for reforms. I'm optimistic that positive change is ahead."
Horizons for Homeless Children advocacy has already yielded results. The state now gives homeless children priority access to public subsidies for early education. And in 2006, then-governor Mitt Romney signed legislation that grants $500,000 to HHC's Playspace Programs. Yet HHC would need to double this amount to provide Playspaces in all of the state's shelters.
"Policy makers are starting to recognize the power of high-quality early-childhood education as an intervention," says Horizons for Homeless Children co-founder Brown. "The young child in an otherwise chaotic situation has a calm, rich experience, which as we all know is essential to healthy development. The cost of not intervening is high. Remediation is very difficult and in some cases, impossible."
Hand in hand with advocacy, HHC's new training and technical assistance program galvanizes and supports the many groups with a stake in eliminating family homelessness. A mainstay of nationwide and state forums on homelessness, HHC has launched a biennial conference, the "Young Children without Homes" National Conference. Its first, in 2005, drew 550 participants from more than 40 states, including policy makers, educators, social service professionals and health services providers.
"Horizons for Homeless Children has become the key organization serving and advocating for homeless children and families-not only in Massachusetts but also nationwide," Brown says. "What HHC is reflects Sue's commitment, passion and extraordinary work ethic. Sue is a role model of what a Wheaton education hopes to create: globally minded, well rounded and committed people doing difficult and important work."
