Interview: April Martin-Ko, Provincial Coordinator, Parent-Child Mother Goose
Photo by Jordan Rowland on Unsplash
The Parent-Child Mother Goose Program has been running for more than 20 years as a national program. The program was founded in 1984 by Barry Dickson, a social worker and storyteller who worked with a large caseload of families experiencing barriers to bonding, and Joan Bodger, a therapist and storyteller, who developed a pilot project to serve families identified as “at risk” by the Toronto Children’s Aid Society.
The idea was to begin at the beginning with the relationship between parent and baby or young child, and to use the pleasure and power of rhymes, songs and stories presented orally in a group setting to foster bonding and family wellness. After successfully continuing and developing the program for a number of years, teacher training workshops were developed in the mid-nineties to train individuals and organizations in the philosophy and methods of the program, helping Mother Goose to spread across Canada and beyond, including Australia.
The program is designed to be preventative and empowering in nature, and is designed to provide community service organizations with a clearly developed program that is responsive to community needs. The program content is designed to be adaptable to particular user groups, but the core components consist of:
· A group program in which parents/caregivers take part together with their infants/young children, with teaching directed to the adults and children participating as appropriate to their developmental stage.
· Activity focuses on oral transmission of interactive rhymes, stories and songs.
· Storytelling is an integral part of the program.
· The pace is slow and relaxed with plenty of time for repetition of material and casual discussion of issues and questions that arise, in an accepting and supportive atmosphere.
· Each program has at least two teachers who share all teaching duties and collaborate to review and plan after each session.
· Groups are small enough to ensure the needs of individuals as well as of the group as a whole can be met.
· The program is aimed at families who would like for any variety of reasons. There is no cost to the parents who participate.
In BC, the programs are coordinated by the BC Council for Families, and we spoke with April Martin-Ko, who is the Provincial Coordinator of the Parent Child Mother Goose program.
April talked about the program in Kamloops, where there is a particularly strong Mother Goose community. They have been running for a number of years, and Maureen Doll, the Kamloops Early Language and Literacy Initiative Coordinator, is a Mother Goose trainer. As Coordinator of the Kamloops Mother Goose programs, she spearheaded getting extra funding to establish a number of specialized programs for the Kamloops area. Maureen is also on the national board and training committee for the Mother Goose program. http://makechildrenfirst.ca/videos/maureen-doll/lives-change-because-mother-goose-program/
The Kamloops Early Language and Literacy Initiative (KELLI) is a partnership of early childhood professionals, community member and parents, with a commitment to building early language and literacy skills in young children. They have been able to offer support to assist with the development of intergenerational Mother Goose programs which run in residential care homes, engaging seniors with diverse abilities, assisted by care aides, together with adults and children. They also run Mother Goose programs for vulnerable families, infant programs, a French enhanced program, and a Secwepemc language enhanced program.
Crystal Murgatroyd is the current Parent-Child Mother Goose Program Coordinator in Kamloops. At the beginning of the pandemic they experimented with doing Mother Goose online locally. They started with ten online groups running throughout the week, noting that “groups will be offered through Zoom, with two facilitators. At the end of each session, facilitators remain on the meeting to connect with the children and families. We believe families can join one another at home and all share in the power and pleasure of songs, rhymes, and oral stories.” BCCF then got them to provide a demonstration and info sharing for other PCMG Facilitators in the province. From that, the National Board has now provided guidelines for programs to maintain connection with parents by offering an online program.
The Kamloops Parent-Child Mother Goose team now have approximately 2000 people following their Facebook page at: ‘Kamloops Parent-Child Mother Goose’ Each day they post a video from one of their facilitators, singing a well-known Mother Goose song. Their families communicate with the facilitators and report that children light up with a smile while watching the short clips.
April noted that, normally, Mother Goose program facilitators would do a call a week ahead to touch base with families and see if they will be able to attend upcoming session. Maintaining those phone calls has been key for programs to continue to offer family support throughout COVID. The story/music is the medium, but building attachment and community building are the goals.
April also spoke about an enhanced program on northern Vancouver Island which is offering the Mother Goose program in Kwakwala, an Indigenous language which is spoken by several nations, with program support from local elders. As well, a number of Mother Goose programs in BC including North Vancouver, Kamloops, Hope, and others, have developed intergenerational programs, based at seniors’ care residences, prior to COVID, and will hopefully be picked up again. The parents and families really appreciated building connections with seniors, especially if they are not connected to or living close to their own families.
Both Abbotsford and Kamloops community programs run Mother Goose groups for parents experiencing post-partum depression, to support building parent-child attachment bonds when that is made more challenging by the symptoms of depression.
April also noted that there is a strong grassroots element at work, sustaining and developing the program through organic growth and capacity building. Trainers in the program have been facilitators themselves (for at least two years) and many have come to facilitation from participation as parent or caregiver. It is also significant that many single parents have developed a sense of supportive community and encouragement through the program and have gone on to become facilitators.
The BC Council for Families (BCCF) is able to provide some funding (through the BC Government Gaming Grant) to smaller communities to enable them to begin to offer Mother Goose. BCCF is creating a program snapshot of existing programs throughout the province to encourage other communities to introduce this well-proven, effective programming to more BC families.
One of the surprising effects of COVID has been to create new opportunities for connection and creative sharing through electronic means. People are more open now to online communication. April shared that she is hoping to build on that capacity so BCCF can effectively use electronic tools to build stronger connections between facilitators in different communities across the province.
For more information about the Parent Child Mother Goose program in British Columbia, please contact the BC Council for Families www.bccf.ca by email at bccf@bccf.ca or by telephone 604-678-8884.