Jerome Wright

Universal Parenting Places are doing their job.

On a hot, muggy morning last week, I drove over to College Park, the redeveloped LeMoyne Gardens public housing project, to see how the Universal Parenting Place was faring.

The other UPP is at Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women on Humphreys Boulevard in East Memphis.

The centers, which opened April 20, are a pilot program that grew out of an Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, showing that 55 percent of Shelby County adults had experienced a traumatic event during childhood — from abuse to neglect and substance abuse in the home.

That number spans every race and socioeconomic group.

The parenting places are judgment-free zones where parents can receive professional counseling, information and emotional support for family-related concerns, no matter how small.

In short, they are a different kind of intervention tool to reduce the toxic stresses inside a family that can negatively impact the brain development of young children and affect effective parenting.

When a mother, for example, is repeatedly subjected to consistent verbal or physical abuse, that can impact how she interacts with her children.

The parenting place in College Park is in a modern-looking building just inside the neat development’s main entrance off Walker Avenue in South Memphis.

The building houses several youth-oriented programs, including Knowledge Quest, a 17-year-old nonprofit dedicated to uplifting children in the 38126 and 38106 ZIP codes.

When you think about the organization’s mission, it is a natural fit for Knowledge Quest to host one of the parenting places.

When I dropped by last week, I met Yolanda McGee, a 39-year-old mother of four children — ages 20, 19, 12 and 10 — she is raising with their father. The two younger kids are enrolled in Knowledge Quest programs.

I assumed (something a journalist should never do) that McGee would tell me that she was using the parenting place’s services because she was having parenting issues. I was wrong. She said she needed a place where she could meditate and deal with stress.

Why? Because as her daughter’s high school graduation approached this spring, McGee learned she was going to need treatment for a malignant tumor.

Dealing with that, and helping her daughter prepare to graduate and get ready to attend a postsecondary school this fall, was wearing on her.

That is what Universal Parenting Places are about.

Rev. Marlon Foster, founder and executive director of Knowledge Quest, said the parenting centers are a “front door” to a host of safety-net options that can “inspire and motivate people to take action” to improve their lives.

If someone needs help beyond what the staff can provide or handle, they can be referred to another agency.

Foster said 309 people visited the center through May 31. Of those, 278 participated in activities or group sessions, such as parenting with teens. Thirty-one sought one-on-one counseling.

At the East Memphis parenting place, 493 people have visited to attend activities or group sessions, including 41 who have sought individual counseling, said Jenny Nevels, executive director of the Baptist Memorial Health Care Foundation, which provides some of the parenting center’s funding.

At Knowledge Quest, Foster said counselors are working with parents on issues arising from raising foster children who have been adopted, children with bipolar disorders, and tension and stress that sprout from generational disagreements on how to be a good parent.

More important, he said, is that the parenting places are designed to remove the stigma of being a parent having issues raising their children.

Foster was ordained in the Baptist tradition, but he pastors the nondenominational Christ Quest Community Church.

I asked him what he personally gets out of operating Knowledge Quest and hosting the parenting place.

“The first institution is the family and (Knowledge Quest and the parenting places) that is in direct alignment with my role as a pastor.

“Anything that helps people is the ultimate high for me. It is fulfillment in its truest form,” Foster said.

He added that Knowledge Quest’s relationship with families is what makes the organization work.

The Universal Parenting Places are an experiment in seeking a new way to intervene in families’ lives before the toxic stresses that can devastate a family turn tragic or impact a child’s brain development in a manner that can doom that child to an adulthood filled with toxic issues, such as substance abuse and abusive behavior.

A few weeks before the launch of the parenting places, members of the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Task Force visited the newspaper’s editorial board.

Anita Vaughn, administrator and chief executive officer of Baptist Memorial Hospital for Women, was among the group.

She told this story about why intervention is crucial:

Rescuers were repeatedly pulling drowning children from a flowing river.

Finally, the rescuers realized that someone needed to go upriver to see why so many children were falling in.

As result, they were able to pinpoint how to stop the children from falling into the river.

In a nutshell, that is why the Universal Parenting Places were created.