STRONG ROOTS
Mom Power
A Group-Based Intervention Program for Mothers
The early years, from pregnancy through preschool, lay a critical foundation for children’s health and development and families’ success across generations. Yet these years are not easy, and many families and coping with mental health concerns, trauma, adversity, and inequities.
Mom Power, a Strong Roots program, is a 10-week, 13-session theory-driven treatment using an innovative and proven curriculum that is specifically designed to target trauma-induced barriers to healthy relationships, social support, and engagement with resources and services. Mom Power embraces evidence-based theory and practice and is the only program, to date, that has documented brain changes in participants “empathy circuits”.
- More than 1 in 4 women experience pregnancy or postpartum mood or anxiety disorders, yet only 1/4 receive adequate treatment
- 54% of young mothers report feeling socially isolated or “friendless”
- A quarter of families with young children live with significant economic adversity
- Experiences of discrimination, structural racism, and implicit bias are associated with rising infant and maternal mortality
- Trauma and other stressful life events affect more than half of all parents and young children
What is Mom Power?
Parenting a young child, while often one of life’s most meaningful and joyful experiences, can also be one of the most challenging. Mom Power is a strengths-based program that engages mothers of young children facing adversity and stress in a nurturing environment that applies attachment theory, cognitive behavioral, and dialectical behavioral strategies to facilitate growth and new skills. A strength of the intervention lies in its multigenerational approach that facilitates each mothers’ insights and reflections and promotes her emotional health and the development of skills that enhance child health and well-being.
Mom Power pillars include:
Social support is enhanced by creating shared group experience, with opportunities for information relationship building during shared mealtime as well as by inviting mothers to bring a guest.
The Parenting Education curriculum emphasizes responsiveness and sensitivity to young children’s experiences. Participants learn key concepts in parenting and child development, observe video interactions and apply concepts learned, engage in activities designed to develop and practice skills and reflect on interaction with their own children.
Self-Care/Stress-Reduction addresses the mothers’ needs for hands-on strategies for reducing their own levels of stress and to help support optimal mental health in order to provide balanced parenting and support their children’s needs.
Parent-Child Interactions are supported by a curriculum that emphasizes creating safe, predictable routines. Mothers receive in vivo coaching on separating and reuniting with children. Mothers are encouraged to “try something new” and anticipate, observe and reflect upon these experiences.
Connecting Families to Care provides a safe and warm transfer of services including individualized referrals to relevant additional community resources.
A unique aspect of Mom Power is the Child Team which provides each child with one-on-one care focusing on meeting the child’s social-emotional needs and providing attachment-related experiences within a developmental framework. The Child Team creates a physically and emotionally safe environment for the children so moms feel confident in the care their children are receiving and are able to focus on the learning provided in the Mom’s Group. The children, too, benefit enormously from the special relationship they develop with their Child Team member.
For more details on the Mom Power Curriculum and Mom Power Principles and Practices, click here.
Mom Power Statistics
providers trained in the program
community locations across Michigan
states participating in Mom Power
Mom Power Fast Facts:
- Is an integrated mental health and parenting intervention
- Experiential, empowering, trauma-informed and strengths-based group that provides real-time parenting coaching
- Was developed with input from mothers and community partners
- Strengthens protective factors to promote family resilience
- Is a reflective practice model that incorporates reflective supervision and attention to the experiences of providers and agencies
- Is offered in multiple formats, including a multifamily group designed to provide a safe, trusting, and nurturing environment for families to connect, grow, and learn news skills
- Includes an innovative and proven curriculum to promote maternal mental health, positive parenting, and strong early relationships
The evidence? Mom Power works!
Mom Power participants share their experiences with the program.
Mom Power is most effective for mothers experiencing high levels of stress or histories of trauma and adversity.
- Mothers show reductions in depression, PTSD symptoms, and parenting stress.
- Mothers report decreased social isolation.
- Mothers have improved confidence and comfort in parenting.
- Mothers increase understanding of children’s behaviors and motivations.
- Two thirds of Mom Power graduates are connected with ongoing care within the community.
- Mothers report increased capacity to reflect on and respond to their own and their children’s emotions.
- Brain imaging studies show that mothers who participate in Mom Power demonstrate greater activation of “empathy circuits” when observing their children’s emotions. Mom Power is the first program of its kind to document functional changes in the maternal brain.
Treatment Increased Precuneus Response during Own Baby-Cry vs. Generic Baby Cry
Mom Power has been designated by the American Psychological Association (Division 12) as an evidence-based psychological treatment.
Bringing Mom Power to your community
Mom Power Formats
Mom Power has been designed to be readily accessible to communities, agencies, and moms – there are three options for Mom Power delivery:
A multifamily group with 10 group sessions and three individual sessions with participants that delivers the curriculum with full model fidelity. Child Team is a productive and therapeutic adjunct to the Mom Power curriculum, however, Mom Power can be adapted for delivery to mothers during pregnancy or in circumstances where delivery of the Child Team component is not feasible.
Infusing the core concepts of Mom Power – strengths-based attachment theory, infant mental health, CBT, and DBT – into any program that engages moms from pregnancy through child age six. Mom Power principles and practices can be used by multiple agencies and programs (e.g. home visiting, clinical providers, community health workers, etc.) to create foundations for resilience and to enhance relationship and parenting skills.
An ‘à la carte’ menu of brief stand-alone interactive workshops delivering Mom Power principles and practices to either moms or professionals. The lunch and learn modules provide specific topic education and skill building and can be used as an adjunct to programs for moms (e.g. SUD treatment, psychotherapy groups, etc.) or for professional development.
Training
The training for Mom Power includes the following options:
Includes:
- Pre-training materials
- Three full days of Mom Power curriculum training
- Child Team implementation training
- Digital versions of training materials provided to participants
Includes:
- Core concepts of Mom Power
- Interactive training on integrating Mom Power Principles and Practices into your agency or program
Training can be adapted in advance to meet your needs.
Includes:
- 1- to 4-hour web-based or in-person training modules, tailored to site interest and need
- Materials provided
For more information on being trained in Mom Power, please complete the inquiry form:
Collaboration
Over 350 individuals have been trained in Mom Power. The program has been implemented in several communities across Michigan, serving many families in need.
The Mom Power Program has also expanded to multiple states, including Tennessee, Ohio, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Virginia.
FEATURED MICHIGAN COLLABORATION
Washtenaw County Mom Power Collaborative
Washtenaw County Great Start Success by Six Collaborative and the University of Michigan, with support from a UM Community Health Services grant, are partnering to bring Mom Power concepts to families across Washtenaw Family.