Building a Nest: creating a safe place for mothers in Lake County

By DAVID REESE

Lake County Leader

Family dinners on Sunday, gardening and canning vegetables.

Those sound like healthy family activities. And for Jenifer Blumberg and Emily Colomeda, activities like gardening would be part of the healthy atmosphere they are hoping to create at The Nest, a home for single mothers in St. Ignatius. Blumberg and Colomeda made their first major public presentation about The Nest last week at a luncheon in Polson.

“It was kind of our coming out party,” Blumberg said. 

The Nest, as it stands now, is an idea, but it’s an idea backed with considerable faith in the project and after last week, community support, Blumberg said. Blumberg and Colomeda, the director of the Lake County Health Department, aim for The Nest to be a safe place for mothers from 16 to 24 who need transitional housing during difficult times. The Nest would be available to all mothers who qualify, but would likely serve Native Americans, since the majority of babies being born in Lake County are Native American, Colomeda said.

Organizers of The Nest have identified a home in St. Ignatius that formerly served as a group home. “It just seems like the perfect place,” Blumberg said. They are hoping to raise enough money to purchase the home, and pursue grants that would give them yearly operating capital. The home is for sale for $225,000, and Blumberg estimates it would cost about $300,000 a year to run it.

Blumberg, a native of Missoula, said The Nest came about because of the best needs assessment ever: living proof.  

Former experience working with the local agencies serving victims of domestic and sexual violence in Lake County and on the Flathead Reservation was living proof, Blumberg said, that many women stay in abusive living situations simply because they have nowhere else left to go.  Or, having left an abusive partner, lack the resources to provide a home for herself and her children.  

Then the research poured in: children – even infants -- who witness domestic violence can develop coping behaviors that, without intervention, are unhealthy and may cause problems throughout their life.

The cycle that started as a young child now shows up as adults. “Some young mothers don’t know what a healthy family looks like,” Blumberg said

The Nest is dedicated to ensuring that children do not grow up witnessing abuse, and have a nurtured — and nurturing — parent who is given the support and skills she needs to fulfill her personal goals and those for her children.

Housing pregnant and parenting teens also means providing a safe and secure environment for infants and toddlers. Colomeda, director of the Lake County Health Department, said The Nest is not meant to be a safe house; the Safe Harbor home fulfills that role and provides emergency housing for women. There are three homes in Montana similar to The Nest.

The Nest will be a place for longer-term care, where mothers, and their children, can feel loved in a safe environment. Blumberg and Colomeda see The Nest as being a family unit, where perhaps there was none. They see grandmothers from local communities wanting to volunteer and share their knowledge with someone they’ve taken under their wings. “This is adding services, to change lives,” Blumberg said.

Colomeda said about 34 percent of women giving birth in Lake County have substance abuse problems.

The Nest will add to the existing public health programs already in place in Lake County, including those at the tribes, local healthcare organizations and with the county. “For once we’re all really working together instead of as little silos,” Blumberg said.

At last week’s luncheon in Polson, the women presented statistics that showed how adult obesity and other adult illnesses are often related to trauma that adults face as children. The more that trauma is reduced as children, the less chance it has to manifest into something later, Blumberg explained.

She told how one of The Nest’s board members, Lake County Sheriff Don Bell, is now seeing children of the people he has arrested over the years as a policeman for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The cycle is continuing, and Blumberg and Colomeda want to stem the tide. 

Their help might be as simple as helping a child learn to hold a book or a pencil before they get into kindergarten; something Colomeda said she’s seen happen here. The Nest will offer parenting skills, life skills, and literacy skills.

They will need money to get there, and right now, nonprofit organizations and donors are waiting to see the Nest get up and running before they make a contribution. “We’ve made a lot of progress,” Colomeda said.

The problem is, they need those donors to get the organization going first. “It’s a cart before the horse kind of thing,” Blumberg said. “We’re hoping for an angel to come along. But faith makes a big difference in something like this.”

They were pleased with the public response last week. “We have a lot more support than we thought,” Colomeda said.