They are a valuable resource for families dealing with complicated challenges involving stress, depression, anxiety, even suicide.
On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with the Cook Center for Human Connection to find out how they are helping families access some of the very best programs available in fostering strong mental health. They are a force for good in the community and Jordan School District is a partner, hoping to help families in need of life-saving services.
Audio Transcription
Anthony Godfrey:
Hello and welcome to the Supercast. I'm your host, Superintendent Anthony Godfrey. They are a valuable resource for families dealing with complicated challenges, including stress, depression, anxiety, and even suicide. On this episode of the Supercast, we sit down with the Cook Center for Human Connection to find out how they are helping families access some of the very best programs available in fostering strong mental health. They are a force for good in the community and Jordan School District is a partner, hoping to help families in need of life-saving and life-improving services.
We’re here with Anne Brown, the President and CEO of the Cook Center for Human Connection. Anne, thanks for joining us.
Anne Brown:
Thank you, Dr. Godfrey, for having me.
Anthony Godfrey:
I'm looking forward to talking with you about some of the resources that are offered to our parents and employees through the Cook Center. And I know that we recently had a representative come and speak with school community council chairs at our district-wide school community council meeting. And they were really enthusiastic to hear about some of the things that are being offered. We've emailed the information out before and we've shared it on our website, but I thought this would be a good chance for us to sit down and talk a little bit more about all the great things that parents have access to, to help them with their kids.
Anne Brown:
Yeah, absolutely. We are happy to be providing these services to you. We have two things. One thing is on your website, there's a little circle medallion that is called parentguidance.org. Parentguidance.org is a place for parents to go and be able to find information when they might be dealing with difficult parts of parenting. Things like my child struggling with anxiety or depression, or perhaps their child is cutting, or they could even be experiencing some suicide ideation.
There's courses that are directed specifically for parents that are struggling with these needs and every course is done by a licensed therapist or a psychologist or a psychiatrist. So it's kind of like finding that friend that you could really get some great advice from when you're struggling with something that might be very difficult in your family. So that's available on your website for any family in your district to access, to be able to have. And that's done through a grant from the Cook Center, we make it available to any school district anywhere in the country.
Anthony Godfrey:
And that is really like having a very informed professional friend that can help you with some very specific concerns.
Anne Brown:
Absolutely, yes. And in addition, it's not all about just the problems of parenting. There's also courses on there, there's one called Parenting with a Purpose, and that just, you know, one of the things I always talk about is that not every parent has had child development courses. So you're an educator, I'm an educator by trade. I've had child development courses, but perhaps if you were a young mother, you maybe never had an opportunity to have a child development course. But also, if you're a Harvard MBA, you may not have ever had an opportunity to have a child development course. So it really, it really stretches the gamut. Every parent can always use a little tune-up. So this is things like the tone of voice that you use, how to set boundaries, how to just be more present for your child. That's some of the parenting with the purpose things.
We also have courses on there that are things like how to understand the emotional development of your child at certain ages because as kids go through different stages, their emotions change. What's going on with a child who's five to eleven years old may be very different than a child who's nineteen to twenty years old. And so we have courses at these different stages in their life. I think there's a whole series that's five or six courses, to help parents kind of level set and know, you know, what are emotions you should be concerned about and what are emotions that are just present because that's the age that the child is.
So we have, you know, not everything is about negative things that are happening in your life as a parent. Some things are just about the normal every day and how can you help and understand more. And then also on parent guidance, there are courses that are kind of self-help for the parents, so how to calm your anxious mind, how to rewrite self-beliefs, how to find everyday happiness. Just some of those kind of things, just to kind of help with your mindfulness and helping you find peace in your own life. So it's a really nice collection of resources, and everything is designed specifically to be talking to you as a parent.
Anthony Godfrey:
I really like that it's private, that it's anonymous, and it's on demand.
Anne Brown:
In their home.
Anthony Godfrey:
In their home. So you can really choose how you want to engage and I would really encourage anybody listening to take a look because there's a long list of options. Options you probably wouldn't think about even as you mentioned some of the offerings. It's just something you might not think there would be specific help for. And really, it's nice to be able to access information that is well vetted, comes from an expert, because when you're just searching randomly online for help with certain problems, you don't know whether you can trust that source. And this is a trustworthy source.
Anne Brown:
It is. And also, when you're looking online, it may not be directed to you as a parent.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right.
Anne Brown:
And so this is directed to you. What we say is that at Cook Center, we help educators, which is you, Dr.Godfrey, help parents, help their children. And we're very specific with that because we know where families are is in the schools. Parents are in the schools, kids are in the schools, and families are more likely to access resources when they're available from schools. But parents may not be quite ready, given whatever situation they're dealing with at home, they may not be quite ready to go ask for help. So having this privately on demand in their home makes a big difference, but having it available through their school website makes it accessible to everyone in your district.
Anthony Godfrey:
And as we've talked about ways to help parents and to help employees, one of the obstacles is not wanting to ask for help, not wanting to lose the anonymity. And that's what I love is that you can engage with parentguidance.org at the level that you'd like.
Anne Brown:
Yes, yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
Let's pull it up really quick and let's just take a look at some of the topics that are available. Okay, so I'm clicking on courses at parentguidance.org. I mean the splash page is, Are You Worried About Your Child? And we all are to some degree or another. We're just worried about making sure that we're doing the very best we can for our child. Here are a few of them.
Connect with your child by parenting with purpose.
Helping your child when they're bullied.
What parents need to know about suicide prevention.
Understanding your child's emotional development, like you said, five to ten years, eleven to fourteen years.
Protecting our children by staying aware and involved.
Social media, everyday happiness, stopping the yo-yo food cycle. I don't know what that is, but I'm probably on it.
Finding yourself when you're feeling lost.
How to let go of your deepest regrets.
These are some great topics and it's so nice to have all this accessible right here. So I hope that anyone listening will take a look and I'm sure there's something for everybody here. You can also look at the library by topic.
Fatigue, resentment, school, business, frustration, technology, teenager, parenting tips, grief and loss. It's a wide range of topics that you can just click and access and it's really remarkable that this has been pulled together. It's very generous of the Cook Center to make this available.
Anne Brown:
And you can also build your own playlists through different topics. So if you're the parent of a young child, I believe there's a preschool section that you can click on and then it will build all of the courses that might have to do with preschool.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yeah, I just tried that out. Tap on depression, tap on exhaustion, and it just pulls up a list of relevant classes. It's fantastic.
Anne Brown:
And every class is about an hour long, but they're separated into about five-minute segments. So a family could or a parent could sit down and listen to the whole course start to finish, but they may just have one section that they really want to focus on and be able to click right to that section so they don't have to watch the whole thing at once if they don't want to.
Anthony Godfrey:
Stay with us. When we come back, find out how families can benefit from the parent coaching offered by the Cook Center for Human Connection.
Break:
Are you looking for a job right now? Looking to work in a fun and supportive environment with great pay and a rewarding career? Jordan School District is hiring. We're currently filling full and part-time positions. You can work and make a difference in young lives and education as a classroom assistant or a substitute teacher. Apply to work in one of our school cafeterias where our lunch staff serves up big smiles with great food every day. We're also looking to hire custodians and bus drivers. In Jordan School District we like to say people come for the job and enjoy the adventure. Apply today at employment.jordandistrict.org
Anthony Godfrey:
Jordan School District has contracted with the Cook Center to provide parent coaching and we have quite a number of families who are using that. And the families who've signed up have continued to use it once they've started. Tell us about what is involved there and what's available to families.
Anne Brown:
Yeah, so family coaching is available to any family in the Jordan School District. It’s made available through the school district, through the Cook Center. And how Family Coaching works is right on parentguidance.org you can go to a section called Parent Coaching. You fill out what's called a confidential questionnaire. That questionnaire goes directly to our therapy team. It is HIPAA protected. It's completely anonymous. It doesn't get reported back to the district. No one has access to your information other than the coach that you'll be working with.
Within 24 hours, a family will be contacted by the coach, and that coach can provide up to a half an hour a week of service to any family in the Jordan District. You just identified that you're from Jordan. And we've had about 80 families access this over the past year, and they have received about 2,900 sessions to support the families in the Jordan School District.
The coaches work with the families on whatever they're struggling with at the moment. Some families stay in for a month and some families stay in for a year, and that's fine. They get access to an app, and that app gives them communication access to their coach. So it's not a crisis line. It's definitely a preventative line, but if they need to get in contact with their coach, they have a way to do that through this app, and the coach will contact them within 24 hours. And then the coaches work on the family schedule, and just, you know, work forward from there to help them with whatever their needs are.
Anthony Godfrey:
And like you said, this is, this is not an emergency access, the sort of program. This is a program to help provide coaching and support to families who may be going through some difficulties.
Anne Brown:
Yes, yes.
Anthony Godfrey:
So they don't have to be severe difficulties. It's just, “Hey, I need to talk with someone about how best to approach this particular situation.”
Anne Brown:
Absolutely and we've had everything, you know, we've had everything from families that are going through divorce to we've had young families say, "How do I get my child to use an inside voice.” So the inside voice one might be, you know, you have one coaching session but the family who's going through a divorce, you know, the coach might be by their side for the, you know for six or nine months or even further.
And then you know we've had some severe ones and if it's too severe we ask them to reach out to the 988 lifeline and you know get that crisis intervention when they need it. But for the most part, we're helping families just be stronger, helping parents be stronger parents and feel more confident in their parenting. It's not therapy. We're very clear about this is not therapy.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right.
Anne Brown:
It's coaching to be able to help the—it's just like if you were a ski racer, you're going to have a coach that's going to help you go faster, help you become a better ski racer. This is just the same thing. You have a coach that helps you know some of those tricks of parenting that can help you be a stronger parent.
Anthony Godfrey:
And I think it's important that you emphasize coach. Everybody has a coach. The best players have a coach. You're always trying to get better. You're always trying to tweak your game and increase your abilities. And parenting is not a specific science, so having someone to bounce things off of and get some coaching is a big help.
So that's the other thing about it, is it's anonymous, but it's for a wide range of purposes. And there are the preset classes, there's the individual coaching. I'm just thrilled that we have this range of options available from the Cook Center for Parents.
Anne Brown;
Thank you, and we are so happy to be your partner in your mental health journey for your families. Thank you for having us.
Anthony Godfrey:
Tell me about the evolution of the Cook Center. You've been with them from the start.
Anne Brown:
I have.
Anthony Godfrey:
I think it's a remarkable story, and a lot of people will be interested to know that it's based in Utah, started right here.
Anne Brown:
It was, just started down the road in Utah. So the Cook Center for Human Connection, we're a nonprofit, we're focused on mental health and suicide prevention, as we've been talking about. We were started by Greg and Julie Cook. Greg is one of the founders of doTERRA Essential Oils. And Greg and Julie have had the opportunity now to consider how to give back to their community.
One of the first places that they decided to give back was many people on this call probably know, but there will be a new primary children's medical center built in Lehi, Utah, and they were approached to be the first donors to that. So they donated $10 million to bring Primary Children's Medical Center to Utah County. And when they did that, they wanted to give anonymously and the people who were doing the fundraising said, "Please don't, because when you are public about your donation, that provides a halo effect and will bring others to the table to help donate.” So their $10 million donation has now helped spur $450 million that's helping build that, will be the amount needed to build that hospital.
Anthony Godfrey:
Wow.
Anne Brown:
And why that story plays into mental health is when Greg and Julie made that donation, they were asked to direct it into something so it could have been, you know, emergency room or cardiac or, you know, pediatric orthopedics or something like that. But they were given a chart and it had this little teeny, teeny, tiny sliver and they said, "Well, what's that one?” And they said, "That's behavioral health. That's the hardest place to get funding.” This was 2018, so this was before the pandemic. And they just, from that, they reflected back on early in their marriage when a young boy who was 11 years old in their neighborhood died by suicide. And they thought, "How can that be the hardest place to get funding when this is happening in our state?”
At about that same time, a report came back on Utah Mental Health from the Kemp Gardner Institute and it talked about how the fact that 60% of people in this state that need mental health services can't find them, and also in most states in the country, suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10-year-olds to 24-year-olds, but in Utah it's the first leading cause of death. All of those things came together at once, this donation to the hospital, this reliving of this young boy dying by suicide in their neighborhood and them being involved in that moment because the father was out of town and Greg had to help the mother at that time. And then this report coming out and finding out that Behavioral Health is the hardest place to get funding, and they said, "Wow, this is the cause that we need to put our resources behind.”
So they went beyond just that initial donation and created the Cook Center, brought me in as their first employee, my background is all in schools and education and working with superintendents as well as Ed Tech. And we just did some research and discovered that there is a real marrying point that we can provide these resources to parents, get more people on the team of mental health, provide more access to mental health through our parentguidance.org and through the coaching through schools.
Anthony Godfrey:
Right.
Anne Brown:
Reduce stigma, because if we're talking about it with families, we're reducing the stigma. And you know, we were just able to bring together this whole plan. And interestingly enough, our U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, he didn't come on the scene until 2020, but when you look at the things that he's laid out, it's like what needs to happen. He talks about we need more people, we need more access, we need to support schools, and we need to reduce stigma. And we're doing that. And so, you know, we know we're on the right track to be helping in this space.
So at the Cook Center we do two things. We give and we serve. So a lot of what we've talked about right now is the things that we do to serve.
Anthony Godfrey:
Yes.
Anne Brown:
Parentguidance.org and My Life is Worth Living. We also have a grants program. Our first year we funded about 60 Hope Squads around the country. Last year we funded about twenty schools with a program called Choose Kindness that helps schools change to a culture of kindness. And this year we're really proud that we funded twenty-six calm rooms around the country. One of those schools was here in Jordan. I think it was Bingham High School, correct?
Anthony Godfrey:
I think it was, yes.
Anne Brown:
And so, you know, super proud to be supporting. I know we did five schools in the state of Utah and then nationally with the other twenty or so grants that we funded, there were about 14 other states represented.
Anthony Godfrey:
It makes a big difference. We've seen a huge decrease in referrals to the office, especially at the elementary level.
Anne Brown:
Yes, really proud of both the things that we do to serve schools and the things that we do to be able to give to schools. And it's all made possible through the generous donations of the Cook family to the foundation.
Anthony Godfrey:
Well, it's great to have you as a partner and it's a great complement to the school psychologists, and counselors, and teachers, and other social workers, other professionals that we have at the schools. This is an important component to that overall plan of helping support students, families, parents, and employees. So, thank you for being an important part of that.
Anne Brown:
Thank you. Thanks for allowing us to be part of it.
Anthony Godfrey:
Thanks for joining us on another episode of the Supercast. Remember, education is the most important thing you will do today. We'll see you out there.