#TrustPlusAtWork: Maryland Family Network
Bringing Personal Financial Coaching to Thousands of Parents and Its Staff
TrustPlus is working with Maryland Family Network to provide personal finance coaching to its staff and the thousands of parents MFN serves across its Family Support Centers. TrustPlus spoke with MFN Executive Director Laura Weeldreyer about the new partnership, why building the financial capabilities of families is important, and what they hope to learn from the process.
The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
What attracted you to TrustPlus?
I’ve been here for 18 months, so I’ve been very much in learning mode. So I try to go to everything, see a little bit of everything that we do. And right before everything shut down, I went to a culminating event for our parents. And this particular cohort was a bunch of young moms, not always moms, but this one was, and it was the final day. And they were talking about what we’ve learned and what we still need to learn. And they got very fired about not understanding money and talking about how we’ll never be able to buy houses. We’ll never be able to start a business and how can we learn more about this and why doesn’t anybody teach us this part of being an adult or being a parent? And those are the words that were kind of ringing in my ears. So, I think from the very beginning, it’s been clear to me that this would be a valuable addition.
Why is it important to build the financial capabilities of the families you serve?
Families are coming in with identified needs and identified obstacles. They’re trying to overcome learning English, finish my high school diploma, learn basic parenting skills, get out of abusive and difficult relationships. I mean, it’s the whole gamut. So I don’t think in America, you can be an independent, effective adult without some knowledge of finance and how money works, whether it’s making a budget, what can you actually afford, how not to rack up debt or longer term goals. And again, one of the things I love about TrustPlus is that once you have signed up for the service, you have access to it for the rest of your life.
How has TrustPlus been received within Maryland Family Network?
I think for those of us who are middle-aged, it’s hard for us to believe in the life changing power of an app on your phone. So I think the staff was a little skeptical at first until they understood that it’s just the portal and you’re going to get a live person on the other end, who’s going to offer you individualized assistance and coaching. That is probably the piece that is most attractive to me.
What are you hoping to learn from working with TrustPlus?
From our perspective, since we run the network, we will get data from TrustPlus about how many parents access it, how many staff access the app. We won’t obviously get any confidential information, but I think that gives us some knowledge about what is the interest in financial programming and services. What’s the uptake. That’s the kind of data we don’t always get about new programs that we institute. So I think that also helps us be a smarter network support system.
