From Conversation to Change: What Oklahoma’s Parent Café Data Shows

The Oklahoma Commission on Children and Youth (OCCY) is seeing what happens when Parent Café conversations are put into practice across communities. Data from 217 Parent Café participants across Oklahoma offers a clear picture. Collected between April 2025 and June 2026, the responses represent Cafés held across all five regions of the state.

The findings show strong results across several measures of family strength and connection. Ninety-seven percent of participants said the Café helped them notice new ways the Protective Factors show up in their families. Ninety-eight percent said they could better recognize and use their strengths to solve problems. Ninety-five percent felt more connected to their community after meeting others and sharing experiences, and 98% felt more confident supporting their children’s growth even when parenting is difficult.

The impact becomes even clearer in participants’ own words.

When asked what they would change for themselves, their children, or their family as a result of the Café, participants wrote:

“I will talk to my children and not at them.”

“Be more present and ask for help when I need it.”

“Listen without interruption, stop advising and just listen to them.”

Across the responses, those intentions formed clear patterns. Participants repeatedly described wanting to communicate and listen more intentionally, strengthen relationships, build community, care for their own needs, be more present with their children, practice patience and emotional regulation, and become more comfortable asking for and accepting help.

Some participants were already thinking beyond their own families. One wrote, “I would like to be more involved in my community and be able to be there to support other parents and give them a safe space to express themselves.” Others said they wanted to connect with more parents, attend additional Cafés, or adapt Café ideas for their own communities.

Together, the data and participants’ words show the impact of Parent Cafés beyond the conversation itself: people leave identifying ways they can communicate differently, strengthen their relationships, seek support, and show up for their families and communities.

What We’re Learning

What these findings give Be Strong Families is more than evidence of impact. They help us understand what participants are carrying forward from the Café experience and where the model is creating the strongest opportunities for change.

The Oklahoma data reinforces several things we are continuing to build around: the importance of intentional listening, helping parents recognize and use their own strengths, creating stronger connections between families, and making it easier for people to ask for and receive support.

Just as importantly, evaluation helps us see where participants want to go next. Their responses point toward continued opportunities to deepen community connection, encourage ongoing Café participation, and support parents who want to bring what they are learning into their own families and communities.

For Be Strong Families, this is the value of evaluation: not simply showing what happened during a Café, but learning from participants so we can continue strengthening the experience, our training, and the tools we provide to communities.