Despite ACE’S closure, key free service to continue
Foundation will fold as planned, but Kindred Place will keep its mental health resources for families and parents up and running
“That wide range of work that supports families and healthy family relationships is sort of the perfect match between Kindred Place and the UPPS to cover the full spectrum of what any parent in the community could need.”
Jennifer Balink
Executive director at Kindred Place
At the end of 2020, Memphis’ ACE Awareness Foundation, a five-year-old organization that has provided free counseling and community resources to parents and families across the city, announced that it would fold at the end of March.
The foundation won’t be returning, but one trademark free mental health resource will. Called Universal Parenting Places, or UPPS, the five Midsouth locations provide mental health resources and family activities through a model pioneered and created by the foundation. Although the foundation is leaving, Memphis-based Kindred Place, a family counseling organization, will keep the UPPS up and running.
“That wide range of work that supports families and healthy family relationships is sort of the perfect match between Kindred Place and the UPPS,” explained Jennifer Balink, the executive director at Kindred Place, “to cover the full spectrum of what any parent in the community could need.”
Kindred Place was chosen from one of seven applicants to become the new operator of the UPPS, in part because of the work the organization has been known for during its three decades in Memphis, explained Adriane Johnson-williams, the ACE Awareness Foundation’s board chair.
At the end of last year — a year that rocked all routines for parents and children — the ACE Awareness Foundation announced its primary funder was halting its contributions, and that the foundation, and its UPPS, would be forced to close. (The foundation declined to disclose the funder.)
Soon after, two funders, also unnamed, expressed interest in supporting the UPPS, so long as a group was identified to operate them. By the end of February, after reviewing submissions, the foundation’s board selected Memphis’ Kindred Place, a family counseling organization, to keep the work going.
“All of this came out of the need to support the healthy development of children by supporting the nurturing of parents,” said Renée Wilson-simmons, executive director of the ACE Awareness Foundation since 2018. “And so while the work of the foundation is important, and has been important, and I believe we’ve done good things...the UPPS are the core of it. And that’s what’s important to continue.”
The product of a local task force
The ACE Awareness Foundation was created in 2015. The Shelby County ACE Awareness Task Force had completed a survey that showed the deep extent of adverse childhood experiences, known as ACES, in Shelby County adults. Having more of those experiences are associated with poorer health outcomes.
“I hope people know that Memphis and Tennessee are considered trailblazers, real leaders, when it comes to addressing adverse childhood experiences,” said Wilson-simmons, reflecting on the work of the foundation. “...there used to be a time when you’d say ‘ACES,’ and people would think you’re talking about a deck of cards.”
Part of the foundation’s strategy, through the UPPS, is to prevent ACES in children by educating adults on how to identify and address their own. The effects of those experiences can’t be undone, but they can in many ways be mitigated to prevent intergenerational transmission of more stress, Wilsonsimmons explained.
But, how does a person address a problem they may not know they have? Especially with a stigma around mental health?
A model that is community-focused
To maneuver around stigmas associated with treating mental health, the UPPS build a community where the therapy and counseling resources are just another service offered — at one of any of the five locations in the Midsouth, parents and their kids, like Kiersten Williams and her daughter Namarah Kaye Lee, have the option of activities like yoga, music lessons or toddler groups.
Williams had her daughter in 2015, the same year the foundation was created. Afterward, it was practically through osmosis, she said, that she learned about free activities for her daughter and free parenting groups and resources for herself.
And in a way, that’s how the UPPS are designed to work.
“So an opportunity for folks to sort of get into the space,” said Wilson-simmons explained, “and then think about, ‘You know what, I might try that.’”
A visual artist with murals across Memphis, Williams described herself as a stay-at-home mom after Namarah Kaye was born. But through a program she knew about at Baptist Memorial Hospital, she found programs at some of the UPPS, eventually building her and her daughter’s routine around a “toddler time” class offered every Monday. Namarah Kaye met other kids her age, and Williams could talk with other moms.
“Having that knowledge or that support on the front end, it just prevents so many other complications down the line, especially when I started to learn about ACES,” Williams said.
Williams strives to be an emotionally conscious parent, she said, and felt that the supports offered by the UPPS gave her more knowledge and a framework for how to do that. Soon, other parents who knew she was in the program were coming to her to learn about what she’d learned from the UPPS, she said.
As the foundation entered 2020, the goal was to create more data about how the UPPS performed, in hopes to sustain the funding, Wilson-simmons said. Those plans were dashed when the pandemic forced the foundation to shift all its programming, which is based on a physical place, online.
That data work aligns with where Kindred Place, the new UPP operator, is headed, Balink said in a recent interview. Kindred Place recently became focused on patient feedback to inform the group’s work, which incorporates a network of therapists and clinicians for children, parent and family counseling.
Kindred Place has a committee in place to transition into offering the UPPS, and some ACE Awareness Foundation members have been invited to join the committee. Balink says they hope to continue the work of the UPPS without interrupting the services families are receiving.
At first, “magical” felt too extreme a word to use to describe the meeting of the UPPS with Kindred Place, Balink said.
“It does feel sort of magical,” Balink said, “to extend in a way that is open to every parent and every family in a truly universal way...it matches what we have done and expands what we have done in a way that will help reach more people, I hope, with something that feels like help in the very best way,”
One thing that most people might not know about Johnathan Lawson is his love for the game of chess, which he learned how to play when he was a freshman at East High.
"I'm a good chess player. I learned at East playing against James Wiseman. James was in tutoring playing somebody, I think it was the tutor," Lawson said. "And I just started to learn the pieces and the moves and my own strategy together. He used to beat me then, but I think I can probably beat him now."
The four-star forward also enjoys playing against his dad, Wooddale coach Keelon Lawson, and said he beats him "all the time." He looks up strategies on Youtube and tests them out against online players on chess.com. He was even playing the day he signed with Oregon, when one of his old coaches came back and beat him.
A big part of why he enjoys the game, he said, is the strategy aspect. Learning different moves and anticipating what the opponent might do. It's also part of what makes the versatile forward such a good basketball player and why he fit in so easily after transferring from Wooddale to Houston this year.
"It was pretty smooth," Houston assistant coach Erik Buggs said of Lawson's transition. "There were a few adjustments here and there just with the things that we run, but Johputting
nathan Lawson is such a high-level thinker of the game. And when you think of the game at the high level that he does everything becomes second nature."
The 6-foot-6 senior is the No. 3 prospect in the state and No. 91 in the nation, according to the 247Sports Composite rankings.
The reigning Class AA Mr. Basketball and Gatorade Tennessee Boys Basketball Player of the Year award winner is also No. 1 on the Commercial Appeal Elite Eight, a collection of the area's top senior basketball prospects.
"Obviously his game kind of speaks for itself," Houston coach Mike Miller said. "He's been a winner everywhere he's gone. Long, athletic, knows how to get to his spots on the floor. High-level passer. He shoots the ball extremely well for us. Just a great basketball player."
He has won a pair of state titles — one as a freshman at East playing for Penny Hardaway, and one as a sophomore at Wooddale playing for his dad and alongside older brother Chandler Lawson, who he'll reunite with at Oregon next year. He led Wooddale to another state tournament berth last year, but the tournament was canceled due to COVID-19.
Lawson, who is averaging 16.6 points 5.3 assists, and 6.1 rebounds this season, described his skill set as a mix of his three older brothers Dedric, KJ, and Chandler Lawson.
“We all have different games, but I'm similar to each of them in some type of way. Dedric, he can post up, he's really smooth and he can rebound and push," Lawson said. "Chandler, he's athletic and he can rebound and score and he uses his long arms on defense. KJ, he's aggressive. That's where I get my aggressiveness from. I just took a piece from every one of their games and put it in mine."
With the state's top three recruits in Lawson, Mason Miller, and Jerrell Colbert, Houston is the favorite to win this year's Class AAA state title. And as Lawson chases a potential third state title at his third high school, he's excited to maneuver the "pieces" in the Houston offense.
"We've got a lot of pieces in the starting five. Mason can score all types of ways. Jerrell, he can rebound and shoot threes. We've got TJ (Madlock) he's a hard defender who can score. We've got a good freshman (guard) Ahmad (Nowell) coming off the bench. We've got Zander (Yates) who can shoot. It's just a lot of talent on the team."
"Everybody just brings something different to the table. I don't have to do everything. And they didn't get to go to state last year so it should be an exciting run to go with them."