Origin Story

The Chicago Parent Program is rooted in the idea that to help a child, you need to help the parent.

Parents are the solutions and the change agents for their families.

In 2002, Dr. Deborah Gross, Dr. Christine Garvey, and Dr. Wrenetha Julion set out to develop a parenting program, focused on prevention, that would be built with parents, for parents. They spent over eight months working extensively with an advisory board of parents to understand the strengths and needs of families, especially those in racially diverse, low income, and under-resourced communities.

The result was a unique, preventative  approach and set of materials that were truly responsive, authentic, and relevant. To maximize impact, the CPP team wanted to make sure that parents could really see demonstrated examples of parenting strategies. So they engaged a minority-owned production company, held a call for auditions, and found families that were willing to invite the CPP team and film crew into their homes and lives for a day.

Equipped with written materials and video examples of real families, CPP began its earliest implementation. Even in this first iteration of the program, the impact was clear. As illustrated in clinical trials, CPP was changing families’ lives.

CPP has served over 10,000 parents and their children across 27 states.

As time passed, CPP expanded from its Chicago-based beginnings and was adopted all over the county. Even as the program grew in scale, one thing remained clear, that CPP yielded tremendous results.

In 2009 and 2014, respectively, Dr. Susan Breitenstein and Dr. Amie Bettencourt joined CPP, and strengthened the program further with their expertise and perspectives. Committed to continuous learning and improvement, the CPP team pursued several innovations, including the 2nd and 3rd editions, a formalized group leader training and certification program, a fidelity monitoring system, as well as the web-based ezParent program.

Today, CPP is headquartered at Johns Hopkins School of Nursing in Baltimore, MD and has served over 10,000 parents and their children across 27 states and the program’s results continuously demonstrate its lasting impact.