UNH Cooperative Extension’s Family Life Education Work Team plans to intensify its educational effort in 2008 to help improve the lives of New Hampshire’s families. “We have one of the most knowledgeable and skilled educational teams in the nation,” says Family Education and Family Policy Extension Specialist, Dr. Malcolm Smith, “And our 2008 educational strategy will allow our team to really demonstrate its abilities.”

To maximize its collective and individual strengths, Cooperative Extension’s family life education team has divided its concentration into five distinct areas of leadership and expertise. Each team will examine and strengthen existing programming while identifying and developing new curricula to distribute throughout the Extension network and eventually throughout the state. They also will explore new and exciting means of getting the Extension message out by strengthening collaborations and employing innovations in web-based and electronic media distribution of programs.

The specialization areas for these new expert teams will include:

Parenting: This group will work to improve a family’s understanding of child development, including brain development and attachment issues, and promote healthy family relationships.

Families Under Stress: These educators will develop and strengthen existing programs for incarcerated and court-involved parents, with programming dealing with prevention of family violence, and efforts to assist families facing mental illness, poverty, grief and loss, and divorce.

Work/Life Balance: This team will work to help employers strengthen their workforce by providing parent and family life education in New Hampshire workplaces and to provide support to policy makers.

Unique Families: The focus of this expert team will be to provide programming to support immigrant and culturally diverse families, military families, foster and adoptive families, gay and lesbian parents, step-parents and other unique family structures.

Family Caregivers: Through this team’s work, relatives such as grandparents who are raising children, children who are providing care for elderly parents and other family care providers, will find educational support.

This renewed effort to intensify Extension’s diverse family life programming will produce community-based training programs, educational campaigns and internet-based resources for families and professionals in New Hampshire who support them. According to Smith, it will be “our best year for New Hampshire families yet.”