The Relief Nursery helps improve the lives of individual children and families in Lane County each day.  Through our replication work in Oregon and now across the United States, the Relief Nursery helps and inspires communities to build and create Relief Nurseries to support their high risk children and families. 

Recently, funded through Holt International’s US Aid Grant, two Relief Nursery staff traveled to Ukraine to help build a system to keep children safe and families together.  Lory Britain, Ph.D., associate director of National Replication and Gretchen Dubie, parent education supervisor, spent ten days in Ukraine training and consulting with social workers, teachers and therapists who are beginning Relief Nursery type programs in the Ukraine. 

Gretchen and Lory spent four days at the University of Kiev training professionals, they traveled to outlying areas and villages to consult with sites creating therapeutic early childhood classrooms and parenting classes, and went on home-visits with high need families. The underlying premise that Gretchen and Lory worked from and imparted to those they trained is the need for both professionals and the community to have a belief in parents’ capacity to change to create healthier families and lives for their children.  

“The people we trained truly embraced our information.  They told us how Relief Nursery concepts were unlike any they had learned in formal education, but that they held so much meaning.  They shared they will now have new faith that parents can succeed with the right supports in place,” said Gretchen Dubie.

Read an update on Ukraine Holt International from the field