Baby face qualitative Evaluation

 
Baby FACE 
Wilder Research, January 2015 
 
Qualitative Evaluation 
10 
Family mobility 
Similarly, 11 parent educators and eight supervisors in 12 sites reported challenges enrolling and 
serving parents because of family mobility. The result is that families’ phone numbers also 
change, so parent educators are unable to follow-up with them. In many cases they move due to 
employment reasons, which disrupted service, but may provide much needed income to the 
family. A few parent educators noted how they made attempts to reengage families when/if they 
returned to the community or connect with families via Facebook or mail so they could still do 
the activities with their child. 
One of the challenges was that I have parents moving in and out of the reservation, being seasonal 
workers or just wanting to try a job. There are not that many job opportunities here, so they have to 
move off the reservation to get a job. That was one of the goals they set for themselves, and we 
encourage them to set their goals. So that was one of the biggest challenges. 
The biggest problem is the mobility issue. A lot of young parents will move out of the community, 
and we don’t know where. It may be that the significant other found work off the reservation. Or the 
young mother had to go to the city to find employment. And also because of domestic violence, 
they may move around a lot, and we don’t know where they go to. 
One of the challenges is parents who are very mobile. They move here and then move somewhere 
else. And they keep changing their phone numbers. We use Facebook to locate them sometimes. 
Sometimes, they move hours and hours away. We try to stay in touch by email and Facebook. We 
send them lessons. Then they may move back again. They move wherever there are jobs when 
they are looking for jobs. When the job is over, they come back out here. A lot of times they move 
to big cities to find jobs.