FAMILY RESOURCES

We partner with local agencies, Beginnings Inc. and Flood City Youth Fitness Academy, to provide evidence-based parenting programs to strengthen you & your family.  Evidence-based programs are proven to be highly effective through extensive research.  The programs listed below are available to support pregnant mothers and families with young children ages 0-5, as well as families with adolescents ages 10-14.

Parents as Teachers 

Parents as Teachers is an evidence-based home-visiting program that aims to improve parent, child, and overall family health and well-being, while also preventing child abuse and neglect.  Through Personal Visits and Group Connections, highly trained Parent Educators build rapport and a trusting relationship with the family, and eventually complete a Child and Caregiver Screening through which they can offer and follow through with appropriate recommendations/referrals to specialized services that empower the parent/caregiver.

The collaborative program model allows the Parent Educator to not only be an advocate for the family, but to work together with them with the overall goals of increasing parent knowledge of early childhood development, improving positive parenting practices, providing early detection of developmental delays, and increasing connection to services in the short-term.  Long-term goals are to ultimately improve children’s overall health, school readiness and success, family economic well-being, and community capacity and connectedness.

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Strong African American Families

Strong African American Families (SAAF) is an interactive evidence-based program for youth ages 10–14 and their parents/caregivers.  The goal of SAAF is to prevent substance use and behavior problems among youth by strengthening positive family interactions, preparing youth for their teen years, and enhancing primary caregivers’ efforts to help youths reach positive goals.

Through seven 2-hour sessions, facilitators administer SAAF using separate skill-building curricula for youth and primary caregivers.  During the first hour of each session, youth and primary caregivers meet separately with facilitators to discuss the importance of following house rules and monitoring children’s behavior, effective communication techniques, the formation of goals for the future, and skills for resisting early sexual involvement, substance use, and other risk behaviors.  During the second hour of each session, youth and primary caregivers meet as a family with the facilitators to build family-based strengths based on what was learned in the separate sessions.

For registration information, call Flood City Youth Fitness Academy at (814) 539-0164.