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Interview with Lee MacKinnon, Director, Families Together program Lee MacKinnon is the Family Educator at Hilltown Health Centers and is also the director of “Families Together”, the Hilltown family support program operated by the Health Center and funded, in part, by Community Development Block Grant funds coordinated by Hilltown CDC. Lee has served as the Family Education and Support director at Hilltown Health Center since 1994. Lee attended college in the Berkshires, then completed her graduate work in Boston and began a teaching and administrative career there. During her teaching career Lee experienced the range of student age levels, from Pre-School to college, and from Boston to California, finally settling in the Hilltowns about 20 years ago. HCDC: Lee, to start, is there anything you would like our readers to know about you or about the Families program? LM: My heart is in the Hilltowns and with small kids. I love western Massachusetts and came here to Cummington with my husband and a baby in 1988. I had been director of an early childhood education and teaching center in eastern Mass., but wanted to come back here. HCDC: How did you get into working with Hilltown family programs? LM: My husband and I had moved to beautiful Cummington with our first baby. I soon found myself lonely and feeling isolated, but, there were no family centers to be found. Another mother (Pat Keith, who was a tireless organizer for child and family issues in the area) and I set about working with the original Family Center. I find young kids and families an exciting way to work in early childhood education. I love problem solving and networking within communities. With families, I love locating the problem and helping to work it out. HCDC: What would you like to see as a next step for family programs? LM: I’d love to see more universal family programs, regardless of resources or location. Parenting is the most wonderful and most difficult of all activities and I’d like to see services be more accessible. It would be great if information were available “on line,” if parents could connect to other parents. Parents need connections that are open and accessible with no stigma attached against asking for help. Asking for help is good, it’s the best parents who ask for help! With the collapse of the extended family, parenting has become more difficult, and the workplace has not yet acknowledged the weakened family. Employers are becoming more sensitive, but we still have a long way to go. HCDC: What would be your greatest wish for the program? LM: Family programs, in general, struggle for funding, even early education. Unfortunately, it reflects a culture not appreciative of children and families. Services are too few and far between. More funding would create a stronger society. New scientific studies on child development demonstrate the importance of early childhood education and care. Why not follow through with sufficient funding for prevention? HCDC: How does the Hilltown program differ from an urban program? LM: Rural funding is difficult and transportation is difficult. The Hilltowns are about small groups. Individual relationships and trust are more important here than in an urban culture. In an urban area the parents attending a parenting session may well be in the company of strangers every time, but here every member will recognize or know many of the other attendees at each session. Without trust nothing can come of it. We know about each other, and we interact on many different levels. Also, we are totally dependent on cars. HCDC: What are the connections, for a person, between accepting help and learning how to reach out to others? LM: We see this in families. Helping one another is extremely valuable to the helper! When people really get talking and sharing with one another, everyone is helped on all sides of the conversation. It is the connections and the give and take that build a community. Can we actually give if we don’t know to accept? As providers, our role is to create supportive nurturing environments, and to build on the strengths of all the members of the group. If we do that with a group in a supportive, non-judgmental way, we empower parents and that leads to improved family relationships. |
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