Pam and Marcella’s reflections on the ParentChild+ Washington Strength Through Connection campaign centered around the power of community.
When trauma ripples through a community, it doesn’t always arrive loudly. Sometimes it shows up as silence, curtains drawn, doors unopened, families staying inside, routines quietly shifting to keep people safe.
That’s what the ParentChild+ team at Start Early Washington began hearing earlier this year.
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Pamela Williams, Washington State Director, and Marcella Taylor, Senior Program Manager for ParentChild+, who work closely with coordinators, home visitors, and families across Washington, began to notice a pattern. Stories were surfacing during technical assistance calls and monthly coordinator meetings, stories of fear, isolation, and families adjusting their lives in profound ways to protect themselves and their children.
Home-based childcare providers were removing signs from their yards. Families were shopping for groceries in the middle of the night. Home-based childcare providers and caregivers were afraid to call the police, afraid to open their doors, afraid even to step outside. Some carried passports everywhere they went. Others stopped advertising their childcare businesses altogether. Families who had survived the isolation of the pandemic were finding themselves back in it, this time driven by fear rather than a virus.
And still, amid all of it, families were choosing connection.
The fear Pam and Marcella describe is layered and deeply personal. It cuts across communities, West African, East African, Latin, Asian, and it doesn’t stop at immigration status. Families who are citizens, families who have lived in the U.S. for decades, families with mixed-status households, all are impacted by the uncertainty, the lawlessness, and the sense that safety is no longer guaranteed.
Parents worry about sending their children to school. Children worry that if they leave, their parents won’t be there when they return. Babies show signs of stress in the only ways they can, changes in sleep, eating, toilet training, and behavior. Providers and coordinators carry not only their own fear, but the vicarious trauma of holding these stories day after day.
Some families are pushed into homelessness almost overnight. Others are being threatened by landlords or forced to break leases. Resources like diapers, food, and emergency funds are stretched thin. And many families are afraid to even accept help in person, asking instead for food to be left quietly at the door.
“This is the tip of the iceberg,” Pam says. “What we see in the news barely scratches the surface of what families are living through.”
The weight is heavy, but so is the commitment—to each other and to the families we serve.
Pamela S. Williams, ParentChild+ Washington State Program Director
As these stories surfaced, the ParentChild+ team asked a simple but powerful question: What can we do?
The answer wasn’t to dismiss the fear or pretend home visiting could fix everything. It was to recognize that connection itself, especially in moments like this, is powerful.
For some families, opening the door to a home visitor is an act of resistance. For others, logging into a virtual visit when it doesn’t feel safe to be seen is resistance. Choosing to read with your child. Choosing to laugh for a few minutes. Choosing to let someone in, even briefly, when the world feels hostile.
“Home visiting continuing to happen in the face of all this,” Marcella says, “that is resistance.”
ParentChild+ has always been a remedy for isolation. In this moment, that role feels even more vital. Home visitors create a trusted space where families can talk openly, ask questions, check rumors against reality, and regain a small sense of control. They help families slow down enough to think clearly when fear pushes them into fight-or-flight. They remind parents that they are still the experts on their children. And that they are not alone.
Choosing connection, whether in person or on a screen, is a powerful form of resistance. This is the power of community: choosing connection, even when fear is present.
Pamela S. Williams, ParentChild+ Washington State Program Director
Out of these conversations, and the weight of what the field was carrying, the Strength Through Connection campaign was born.
Pam describes it as a way to “wrap our arms around the field as they wrap their arms around families.” The campaign centers a simple truth found across cultures, faiths, and traditions: we are stronger together than we are alone.
For ParentChild+, Strength Through Connection is both message and practice. It’s a reminder that even when resources are limited, connection multiplies strength. That community care is self-care. That choosing relationship, again and again, is how families survive and heal.
Every family in ParentChild+ will receive a small but meaningful symbol of that commitment: a sticker representing a mother and child embraced by the outline of Washington state. A reminder that they belong. That they are supported. That ParentChild+ is part of their family, not just during the program, but beyond it.
What stands out most in Pam and Marcella’s reflections is not only the fear—but the courage.
Families are still calling every day asking to enroll. Grandparents who once participated are reaching out for their grandchildren. Home visitors and coordinators are exhausted, afraid, and still showing up often outside work hours, to make sure families have what they need.
There is no single right way to respond to trauma. Some families say yes. Some say not right now. ParentChild+ meets them where they are without judgment, without pressure, trusting families to know what they need in each moment.
“In times when people feel powerless,” Marcella says, “community rises.”
Strength Through Connection is about honoring that truth. About naming fear without letting it win. About recognizing that in moments of opposition, resistance often looks like care. Quiet, persistent, human care.
And about believing, even now, that hope can grow when we choose to stand together.
ParentChild+ Washington State Program Director, Start Early Washington
Pamela S. Williams is the ParentChild+ Washington State Program Director at Start Early Washington, bringing more than twenty years of experience advancing family literacy, early learning access, and equitable home-based childcare models.
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