It is a typical Tuesday at the Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery. A staff member rocks an infant while toddlers roll on play mats. In another room, older kids change into costumes and careen around the play equipment. One minute they’re upside down on the slide, the next they’re digging through books. They’re generally very busy with the serious business of being kids. That is not something these kids often get to do.
The kids — 16 of them today, which is the Crisis Nursery’s capacity — are all here because their parents needed a break, often to deal with a housing crisis, a medical emergency, or the sheer exhaustion of being a single parent. Although there are no income or other requirements — beyond living in Hennepin County — 84 percent of the Crisis Nursery’s clients raise their kids on $10,000 a year or less. About one-fifth are homeless.
According to Mary Pat Lee, the nursery’s executive director, there are clear indications that stress and trauma have increased for families on the lowest rungs of the income ladder in the last year or two. “Our families are the canaries in the coalmine,” she says. “So the economic stress was hitting them a while ago.”
The Crisis Nursery served 1,351 families in 2007, a number that’s not expected to rise when the 2008 figures are finalized because they were already operating pretty much at capacity. Instead, what’s changed is what’s going on outside the nursery.
“Our families have always experienced the crisis that is becoming more apparent to the general population,” says Molly Kenney, director of family services. “So it’s really hard to pinpoint the economic crisis as part of the issues that they’re facing. But the ramifications of the rest of the community facing those issues have really affected our families and our services in general. I would say the housing market has really drastically changed and [our families are] just that much closer to being evicted or experiencing foreclosures. Homeless shelters are always overfull and the resources available are just that much more limited.”
The Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, the only residential crisis nursery in Minnesota and one of only 20 in the country, opened in 1983, a collaboration of the Junior League of Minneapolis, the National Council of Jewish Women, and several other groups. The goal was to prevent child abuse and neglect when families are in crisis. It is now an independent nonprofit.
When parents first contact the crisis nursery, they go through an extensive intake procedure to identify their needs. They work with a counselor to set goals — finding housing, starting a job search, getting some rest — for the three-day period during which their kids stay at the nursery, which accepts only kids 6 and under. Some families later enroll in the 4th Day Program, which allows for longer-term follow-up and services. Hundreds of volunteers help by cooking meals, playing with the children, and sorting donated items.
Kenney says that the media’s recent focus on the economic crisis has helped normalize what Crisis Nursery families have long faced. “It could pretty much happen to anyone. It’s not so stigmatized.” That kind empathy doesn’t have to grow out of economic troubles. Sometimes it comes from the shared experience of being a parent.
“It’s not uncommon at all to have a mom come up and talk about the kinds of reasons people use us,” says Lee. “Sometimes its just exhaustion. A single parent with a couple of kids one of whom is a colicky baby and you haven’t slept for two or three days. I’ve had moms come up, people who were clearly folks with means, say, ‘God, I remember that time, and I had resources and I had family, so I can’t imagine.’”
Tricia Cornell edits Minnesota Parent.
