A Life Journey with At-Risk Families:
PB&J Family Services, Inc.
Albuquerque, New Mexico is a growing Southwestern city, home to a
diversity of cultures in a colorful, vibrant setting. It is also home
to a unique non-profit organization, developed over the last 37 years to
serve at-risk children and families. While directly serving a specific
community, systems and policies have emerged that have resulted in
cutting-edge practices for those who frequently have no voice at policy
tables.
PB&J Family Services, Inc. (affectionately known as Peanut Butter and
Jelly) was founded in 1972 in Albuquerque's rural Southwest valley in
response to a scarcity of services for young children. Its first target
population was children of mothers being treated at the county mental
health center. It then grew to inform child welfare practices more
widely in the Albuquerque area.
I write this article as PB&J's co-founder and Executive Director
emeritus, having served as its ED for 35 years. PB&J defines its
mission to serve at-risk children to grow to their full potential
within nurturing families in a supportive community. Over the years,
the effort of helping our families to become more nurturing has faced
significant challenges. Creating supportive communities and families has
meant incorporating the spaces of prisons and jails into family and
community life—an effort with countless barriers. The growth of PB&J
has been, in every instance, a response to the needs of children and
families that have emerged in a changing society.
Although PB&J now provides services for nearly two thousand highly
challenged lives, its beginnings were rooted within a handful of mothers
in the early 1970s when I was employed at the University of New Mexico's
mental health center. With interest, I observed these young women
coming in for treatment. They'd sit around a large table doing arts and
crafts as a nurse walked around the table injecting each woman with a
psychotropic medication. We used Prolixin at the time, which was
thought to be an effective chemical combatant for clinical depression.
After the group activities, the women were given a vial of Thorazine
tablets to offset the side effects of the Prolixin, and we wouldn't see
them until their scheduled treatment the following week.
I wondered, who are these women? Are they parents? Who are they
going home to? Whose lives do they affect? Who affects theirs? In
those days, we didn't have public transportation in Albuquerque's rural
valley areas, so I began asking the women if they wanted rides home.
One by one they accepted, and, as I left them at their front doors, I
realized that every woman was a parent of very young children.
Having been a teacher, I decided to start a small school for these
kids in order to get them out of the dark environment in which they
lived, and provide some stimulation and learning. With my friend and
co-worker, a child development associate named Christine Ruiz, we
located donated space in a storage room, cleaned it up, received donated
crayons, paper, puzzles, tables, chairs, and snacks, borrowed a bus
every morning from the mental health center, and off I'd go around town
picking up children to take them to their new school.
The children's response was nothing short of amazing. These quiet,
withdrawn children became animated and active. They danced, sang, and
played. As time passed, however, unexpected and unintended results
occurred. Children began to show signs of significant physical abuse.
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