Citylink Center
800 Bank Street
Cincinnati, OH 45214
Implementation of Every Mother's Advocate
Every Mother's Advocate (EMA) supports at-risk mothers for the benefit of their children. Cincinnati’s foster care system is overburdened while over 70% of family separations are due to economic hardship. ?MA’s program is a nationally proven model that addresses this. 88% of mothers who go through the EMA program retain their families. Having demonstrated the effectiveness of the program in Florida for 3 years, EMA has expanded nationally, testing the program in mission critical markets, serving 937 mothers and over 2,300 children.These moms face common challenges: financial insecurity, child behavior, single motherhood, anxiety and depression. Each mother is assessed on parenting practices, family goals, and biopsychosocial needs. EMA empowers families through an individualized, holistic approach increasing resilience, overcoming risk factors, and achieving lasting stability for families. This model ensures that every mother in crisis has the holistic support she needs to raise her children in a stable and nurturing home.
Program Goals:
With these two approaches, EMA provides holistic, comprehensive support to mothers and their children, helping them to overcome challenges and keep their families together. The EMA model will leverage the strengths of CityLink including an established case management staff, an ample volunteer pool, and a wide network of barrier removal services.
CityLink will implement the EMA model in Cincinnati as an affiliate, supported by the national EMA team. Our goal is simply to see more families at risk of separation stay together in a well-supported household. We know this will have an immediate impact on those single-mothers and a massive long-term impact on the children. A care coordinator can serve 75 moms per year and there is a target of 85% family preservation.
Program Results:
Since our evaluation of the program, CityLink has been working with our local Job and Family Services (JFS) team to structure a partnership. Senior leadership has been excited about the opportunity to move into the preventative space with the partnership but it has taken longer than initially anticipated to have an effective referral pipeline. The CityLink team has met with 3 units to inform them about the EMA program and to establish an effective plan to receive referrals from their assessment team, as they identify a mother in need of further support before JFS intervention occurs.
At the launch of EMA in March, the referrals were slow. Their leadership later determined they would prefer to have a formal MOU in place to open up more potential referrals to the program.
We have had 75 total referrals (38 self referrals, 32 JFS referrals, 5 other) and 23 moms have joined the EMA program. While this is behind target, we are encouraged that after signing the MOU with Hamilton County Job and Family Services (JFS) in June of this year, 27 new referrals have been sent to our EMA Coordinator at CityLink Center in the last 2 months compared to 5 referrals in the 3 months prior. JFS is the best referral source with ? of the referrals starting the program compared to just ? of self referrals starting the program.
At the current rate of referrals from JFS and start percent, we would far surpass our target volume for year one.
14:month x ? = 9.3:month x 12 = 112 engaged
Website:
http://www.citylinkcenter.org Amount: $25,000
Date: June 2023
