MountainStar Family Relief Nursery's mission is to prevent child abuse and neglect through community support and therapeutic services that help vulnerable children and families succeed.

MountainStar Family Relief Nursery (MountainStar) is an early childhood, child abuse prevention program that started in Bend in 2001 and has grown to include centers in Madras, Prineville, and Redmond. We provide therapeutic classes for babies and toddlers and offer critical support to their parents. Families qualify for our services based on “risk factors” (family stressors) that can compromise a child’s safety and healthy development — especially during the critical first three years of life.

MountainStar is based on a program started in Eugene over 40 years ago by a group of women who wanted their community to do more to help high-stress families with young children. Relying on Child Welfare as a sole source of intervention was simply not enough. Relief Nurseries combine a trauma-informed early childhood classroom with home visiting and services to parents that help to keep kids safe and families together. 

There are now over thirty Relief Nursery programs around the state serving nearly 4,000 children annually — 76% of whom live in poverty and 44% of whom are children of color. Families typically report an average of six historical risk factors including employment problems, mental and physical health issues, partner violence, substance abuse, being an adult survivor of abuse, and homelessness. They also report an average of nine current family issues such as poverty and high levels of stress.

In terms of prevention, Relief Nursery programs work about as far upstream as you can get. You might be surprised to learn that the brains of babies and toddlers develop at a rate of one million new neural connections every second! A caring, attentive, and responsive relationship with a parent or other primary caretaker has a profound and positive role in a child’s development. Simple daily interactions are how we learn language and so many other things at this age. These primary relationships help children develop the capacity to manage big emotions and find comfort when distressed. Early relationships become a template for relationships later in life. 

Young children who routinely experience high stress, repeated crises, trauma and who have parents distracted by life circumstances can become wired to survive rather than thrive. California Surgeon General Dr. Nadine Burke Harris describes in a TED Talk how “fight or flight” works well when confronted by a bear in the woods, but not so well for a child when the “bear” comes home every night.

Statewide, Relief Nurseries raise $8 million every year in private funding to address these issues and volunteers contribute 40,000 hours of time to children and families. Community involvement is key to supporting the success of Oregon’s most vulnerable young children and their families.

This type of community involvement is critical to all of MountainStar’s Central Oregon centers, and recently resulted in the opening of a new center in Redmond. Generous gifts from community members funded the down payment for a property in Redmond. The Central Oregon Association of Realtors issued a challenge grant that was matched by the Deschutes Board of County Commissioners. The City of Redmond and the Oregon Child Care Licensing Office helped to expedite our opening despite the pandemic. Other businesses, community groups, and individuals who joined the effort will be acknowledged at our ribbon cutting on Oct. 14. 

Now is a good time to focus on hope and make our world better and brighter for children in our communities. MountainStar’s focus on the first 1,000 days of life for children living in tough circumstances can have a profound and long-lasting impact on them personally and for our society as a whole. Scientific research in this area documents a wealth of positive outcomes that span the fields of education, economic development, individual and public health, criminality, and social justice. 

While you cannot buy a plant at our “nursery,” you can help to plant a seed for the future! For more information, please visit mtstar.org.