Our Executive Skills Approach
New Moms believes in the strength, ability, and potential of all families, staff, and stakeholders to pursue and achieve their goals. Strong Executive Skills development can unleash the potential of young kids, parents, and communities.
Everyone has Executive Skills – the brain-based capabilities that act as an “air traffic control system” to help us organize things, plan things, and get things done. This basic architecture of the brain begins to develop before birth, with its largest period of growth in early childhood through adolescence. Emerging scientific evidence shows another period of rapid brain development when people become parents – this period of time is a huge opportunity for re-wiring of the brain.
New Moms embeds this knowledge into our multigenerational “Executive Skills Coaching” service model, putting young moms in the driver’s seat and supporting them and their kids as they strengthen their core life skills and set the foundation for well-being. Understanding the interconnected goals and well-being of young moms and their kids means we can engage with and support the goals of whole families at once.
In 2016, New Moms, with support from The Annie E. Casey Foundation, piloted this Executive Skills approach in our Job Training program. The pilot was extremely successful for both coaches and families, and now is a core practice of all New Moms’ programs. Read more about our pilot in the Executive Skills Pilot White Paper and the expansion of our Executive Skills-informed services in our Executive Skills Implementation.
Housing: New Moms’ supportive housing portfolio offers 40 apartments of transitional housing for moms under 25 years old and kids in our Transformation Center headquarters in Chicago, and 18 apartments of permanent supportive housing in our Clare Place residence in our Oak Park Center.
Job Training: New Moms’ best-practice 16-week paid job training program blends classroom and hands-on job experience at our social enterprise candle company, Bright Endeavors. Graduates are equipped with the skills, network, and confidence to succeed in the workforce.
Academic Coaching: Being a mom shouldn’t require abandoning academic dreams. Through monthly stipends, childcare support, and individual and group coaching, New Moms provides a resource for young moms looking to graduate from postsecondary education and find work in family-sustaining, living-wage jobs.
Family Support: New Moms partners with pregnant and parenting young women living in the community through the Parents as Teachers model and curriculum, ensuring moms become their children’s first, best teachers. Pregnant women can also partner with our doulas and access reproductive health education and prenatal support.
New Moms’ Executive Skills Coaching affirms young families’ innate skills and strengths to engage them where they are right now, and partner together for long-term success. Our coaches are allies of resilient families, supporting young moms with tools and practice as they navigate parenthood, adolescence, and progress toward their goals. Simultaneously, as an organization, we challenge the systemic barriers and racism that inhibit economic mobility and family well-being among communities of color, and we integrate and apply promising practices into our programming, infrastructure, and engagement with families.
Want to implement Executive Skills Coaching at your organization?
Check out The Hub @ New Moms — our Executive Skills Coaching training and consulting services that support your work in the human services field.
