This blog post was written by Holly Lackey, United Way of King County Community Impact Manager, Education Strategies Team.

For more than 15 years, United Way of King County has been a proud supporter of the ParentChild+ home visiting program, helping families with 2- to 4-year-olds prepare their children for success in school and beyond, and equipping parents to serve as their child’s teacher and advocate.

ParentChild+ Home Visitors meet twice weekly with families and provide important educational materials and culturally relevant support.  We see that ParentChild+ staff are trusted by families and are often best positioned to provide other resources and assistance. We honored this additional work and helped resource it through flexible funding to ParentChild+ sites, made possible by our partnership with Stolte Family Foundation. 

ParentChild+ families have already been navigating complex challenges and are now facing increased barriers to resources. Families are experiencing the rising costs of necessities like food, housing, and gas, and concerns for their family’s safety with increased attacks on immigrant communities.

At the same time, the ParentChild+ sites serving families also face unique challenges, including underinvestment in early learning services, rising costs for program necessities like mileage and supplies, and harassment of providers and people of color in the early learning sector. We know that education does not exist outside the realities families face, and ParentChild+ home visitors work within these complex systems every day to support families holistically.

The ParentChild+ model prioritizes a cultural and linguistic match between families and their home visitors. Most of the ParentChild+ home visitors are women of color, many of whom are refugees and immigrants who understand the challenges families face. With most home visitors sharing backgrounds and identities with program families and over 30% being former participants themselves, they often play a critical role in becoming part of a trusted support system for parents of young children.

When individuals feel safe and have their needs met, they can fully show up – whether that’s as staff engaging with families, as young children developing new skills, as parents supporting their families, or as organizations sustaining services and responding to community priorities. We also recognize that underinvestment in programs supporting early learning and restrictive grantmaking often means that, while community-based organizations know the needs of their communities, they may not have the resources to respond.  

Because of the Stolte Family Foundation’s commitment to holistic support for ParentChild+ programs and families, when ParentChild+ Home Visitors and families expressed the need and communicated the challenges they were experiencing, United Way was able to respond with a low-barrier grant, distributing flexible funding to ParentChild+ sites.

ParentChild+ sites dedicated some of the funding to meeting families’ basic needs. They distributed grocery and gas gift cards to families in their programs, purchased necessities like diapers, wipes, and clothing, provided rental assistance to ensure families maintained stable housing during programming, and hosted workshops and events for families to gather.

Because of this holistic support, families were able to participate more fully and continue to build deep, trusting relationships with their Home Visitors.

One staff member shared, “Families expressed a sense of relief and gratitude, noting that this support came at a time when inflation, reduced public services, and broader societal unrest made it even harder to provide for their children. Beyond material support, the gesture affirmed that their challenges were seen and valued, helping strengthen trust and engagement in the program.”

Flexible and trust-based funding fills gaps for families while honoring their autonomy. It also allows organizations more flexibility to support their staff and programs. Home Visitors are an essential part of ParentChild+, and organizations took this opportunity to acknowledge the incredible work they do every day. About 75% of sites requested funding to provide staff bonuses to recognize the emotional labor they carry and the important roles they play in the program.

Outside of staff bonuses, flexible funding means sites use the funding creatively to support their staff and programs through initiatives like:

• Professional development and training opportunities for staff
• Staff celebrations and events focused on wellbeing
• Materials that support staff experience and programming, such as technology to support hybrid programming

When organizations have the flexibility and trust to meet the needs of their programs and support their staff, it benefits everyone. They can fill funding gaps, enabling them to meet new needs, invest more in current staff, and respond to changes in the nonprofit landscape from a place of stability.

“Having this additional funding supported not only the families but the staff, too. Often, staff are asked to do more with less, and this was an amazing opportunity. When staff are well supported, they can do their best to support their families,” said a ParentChild+ staff member.

United Way invests in ParentChild+ because we believe that parenting should be supported and sustainable; that all children deserve the support and resources they need to learn and thrive; and that home visitors and nonprofit staff are essential workers, and their programs need increased investment and support.

Stolte Family Foundation’s longstanding partnership allows United Way to be responsive, and flexible funding helps us implement our shared values as we engage with the community. In partnership with the Stolte Family Foundation, we honor the realities organizations, staff, and families face and help them move toward sustainability and promote well-being for families and staff.

PC+ at UWKC is generously sustained by a dedicated village of supporters: a long-term public-private partnership with King County Best Starts for Kids and the City of Seattle, multi-year investments from the Stolte Family Foundation and the Norcliffe Foundation, and the generosity of individual donors.