Overview of the current and future direction of the Family & Intercultural Resource Center (FIRC)'s mission and programs. Gain a better understanding of the Community Support and Families United services offered to Summit County, Colorado.
2. Family & Intercultural Resource Center Our mission is to promote stability by aiding, educating and working together with families, individuals and organizations to build a stable Summit County.
3. Over the last year FIRC served over 3,500 local families and individuals through assistance, home visitation, parenting classes and the food bank
4. FIRC provided over 1,469 home visits to 114 Summit County children to help prepare them for entering kindergarten
5. FIRC helped over 345 families with rent, utility and medical bills totaling over $143,000 in assistance
9. Community Support Emergency help with food, clothing, housing, and utilities Medicaid and CHP+ health insurance programs Nutrition and cooking classes Long-term follow-up support
19. Outcomes Follow up with families is done at 30, 90 and 120 days: Results: Help families achieve and maintain stability Focus on strengths Address common obstacles
21. Based upon studies, over 465 households live below Federal Poverty Level, and 1,436 households in Summit County live below the Colorado Self-Sufficiency Standard Overlooked and Undercounted: Struggling to Make Ends Meet in Colorado, Colorado Fiscal Policy Institute, 2007
69. 97% of parents in our program reported an increase in parent knowledge around child development as a result of their involvement in Families United
74. Summit Thrift & Treasure Remodel Input from committee of Summit County Business Owners Remodel and improvements to improve quality of donation and shopping experience Improve work environment Increase revenue for FIRC programs
75. Classroom Space Purchase Expand FIRC’s capacity to provide classes including parenting, life skills and nutrition Purchase and remodel space in Dillon Operational by Spring of 2012 More space for other nonprofits in the community
76. Cross County Parenting Grant The Summit Foundation recently supported a new and innovative grant to improve parenting programming across Summit and Lake counties. Summit Foundation combined resources with the El Pomar Foundation, Vail Resorts Echo and Freeport Mcmoran FIRC is the lead agency for the grant
77. Cross County Parenting Grant Results from FIRC Started Fatherhood Program 8 Dad’s in support group 12 Dad’s receiving home visits New Class – Dr. Dad
78.
79. 3 new vans for accessing youth development programs
Families United is actually FIRC’s largest program. In addition we are fortunate to operate STT.
In part because of STT we are able to maintain a very diverse funding base which makes us much more stable than many other nonprofits. Like many however, we have seen large cuts in federal and state funding. This makes it challenging for us to meet increasing need for our services. As a result we have really focused on increasing STT revenue.
Rob Murphy, Manager of the FIRC’s Community Support ProgramThanks to support from the Summit Foundation Community Support has been able to expand services to meet increased demand during the recession. As an example of the level of need we’ve been facing, FIRC has prevented over 600 families from becoming homeless over the least 5 years.Now we’ll show a short clip of an interview with one of these households, giving their perspective on the impact that FIRC has had on their lives.
Besides providing housing assistance, CS helps struggling local families and individuals with other basic needs such as food, clothing, and utilities. We also raise awareness about Medicaid and CHP+ health insurance, and help families to enroll their children in these programs. We offer nutrition and cooking classes to help local families learn how to prepare healthy meals on a budget. Last, we provide long-term follow-up, focusing on a family’s strengths, resources, and opportunities, under a model called Family Development.
Direct financial support in a crisis is only a part of the services we provide. We also offer follow-up services under the family development model, job scholarships, health insurance enrollment, and other supportive services.
Summit Foundation support has been critical in allowing us to meet drastic increases in demand during the recession, especially with regards to housing and food assistance.A Summit Foundation pass-through grant from the Anschutz Foundation allowed us to prevent over 40 local households from becoming homeless, and funds raised through the Summit County Cares campaign have allowed us to provide emergency help for over 125 families. We’ve also been able to keep up with increased need for food assistance, despite receiving over 1800 visits to the food bank in the past year.
These numbers demonstrate the short-term outcomes of homelessness prevention and food relief; but through our supportive services we work to help families achieve long-term outcomes as well.Data collected from the Colorado Family Support Assessment that we ask families to complete shows improvements not only in housing and food security, but other areas such as access to health care.
Taking a look at Housing, this chart shows the percentage of families reporting that they are thriving with regards to their housing situation. While only about 40% of families report that they are thriving at the time of the first survey, about 60% report that they are thriving about 6 months after receiving services.
This chart shows data for families over the same time frame with regards to the food security. While only about 20% of families report that they are able to afford sufficient and nutritious food for their family at first, this rises to over 30% for families surveyed 3-6 months after receiving services
To briefly explain the follow-up process and supportive services behind these numbers:CS staff follow-up with families approximately 30, 90, and 120 days after the initial application, and work with the families to help them achieve and maintain stability by: 1. Focusing on a family’s strengths, resources, and opportunities 2. Helping families address common obstacles to stability
Community Support has expanded its supportive services to better help families achieve these goals, including:Money management counseling addressing the household budget, saving for emergencies, and handling debtHousing Counseling, including counseling for renters on landlord and tenant rights and responsibilities and counseling on available services for the homelessWe plan to get trained on foreclosure counseling in order to begin working with homeowners in danger of losing their homes, and to begin offer this service next yearContinue to offer job scholarships to help local workers get a job, keep their job, or get a promotion or raise in pay.
To illustrate the ongoing need for these services in Summit County, about 465 local households live below Federal Poverty Level; However, a better measure of family stability, especially in a community with a high cost of living, is the Colorado Self-Sufficiency Standard, which is a county-by-county measure: by this measure about 1,436 households do not earn enough to afford the cost of living in Summit. Besides these families, we know that in a volatile economy many more families are only a missed paycheck away from a potential crisis. Summit Foundation support has been critical in helping us serve these families, both with short-term crisis as well as long-term solutions.
Introduction of FUIntroduction of Jamie and her story-Enrolled in January of 2008Exiting the program this month after 3 ½ years in FUParent of 3 children, 2 of which are twins
Which is why our work at FU is crucialOur work to support families during the early childhood years affords parents the opportunity to provide positive experiences to foster healthy growth and development.
Home visitation- each family is assigned a Parent Educator that will visit their home monthly with a Parents as Teachers activity Family Activities/Group Meetings- we provide group meetings for FU families to meet other parents in the community as well as to get educated on topics chosen by parents in our program, or to have a structured time to interact with their children with a developmental focus guiding them.EHS- FIRC collaborates with Head Start office to provide a high intensity home visitation program to families that qualify. We have one PE that only visits EHS families, she serves 10 children and sees each family weekly.Parenting classes- use the Active Parenting Now curriculum and we offer classes for parents of all age starting from birth through the teen yearsResource and Referral- PE’s offer casework type support for all the families they visit, making referrals is essential for family’s successMamacitas/Padres en Accion- Latino support groups that offer parents a place to network with other parents and to learn about topics that they choose from local experts. Examples- law enforcement presentation/ domestic violence/ how to prevent sexual abuse Bright Beginnings- a less intensive home visitation program available to all families in Summit County with children ages prenatal to 3 yrs.The goal of BB is to connect families with the resources and services available in Summit County as well as provide them with developmental information specific to their child
Home Visits- PE’s meet with families in their home to deliver a home visit using the Parents as Teachers curriculum focused on early childhood development and positive parenting strategies. Each home visit has an interactive game or activity for parents to play with their child which focuses in on a specific developmental task. PE’s explain the development and model each activity, before handing it over for the parents to engage in with their child. Next step is for the PE to guide the parents through active observation to understand and appreciate their child’s exploration and development.Scholarships- Research suggests that when a child in Parents as Teachers is also enrolled in a preschool program, the combination of the two models together has the greatest impact on school readiness. With the assistance of Vail Resort’s Echo program, we can offer a limited number of scholarships to preschool aged children in our program to give them the best opportunity to enter kindergarten prepared.
This slide illustrates how the Summit Foundation’s contributions last year helped not only the families in our Families United program, but it also provided parenting education and support to many families in our community through parenting classes and support groups.
Families United has not recruited families for our program for more than five years, and the numbers of children on our waiting list continue to increase. This speaks volumes for the direct referrals we get from families in our program as well as other collaborating community agencies. Our retention rate for children in our program is at 90% which is among the highest in the state for PAT programs. This high retention rate combined with a waiting list that continues to grow has challenged our program to keep up with the demand for services in our community.We recently hired a new PE that is at training this week and will come back ready to serve 30 families from our waiting list. We are projecting that 140 children will be enrolled in FU by the end of the year. We hope that this will also drop the waiting list numbers back down to a manageable number of 30-40 children.
Here are some examples of what we cover in home visits:School Readiness- we believe all parents want the best for their child and research shows that when a child enters kindergarten with the developmental and social skills they need to succeed, this carries forward to their entire career as a student through high schoolPositive Parenting Skills- Parents share insights and goals with their PE’s with the hope that they will then get the support they need to change and grow in their role as a parent. We discuss topics such as positive discipline, how to bond with your child, and the importance of recognizing positive behaviors in your child.Development- The PAT curriculum discusses development in reference to all developmental domains. We use developmental milestone charts to help parents get an idea of what they should be expecting to happen next, as well as to appreciate the seemingly small but developmentally significant things their children are learning every day. We also administer the Ages and Stages Questioneer screening tool to reassure parents that their child is on track developmentally, or when appropriate we will refer a child to get a comprehensive screening from professionals when there is the possibility of a developmental delay.
Based on a scale of 1 to 5. Surveyed after one year in the program on their confidence level in various areas of parenting and these are the results.Know how to interact to help development – parents that understand developmentally appropriate behavior have more patience in dealing with challenging stages of development resulting in lower incidents of child abuse and neglect.
These areas are the focus of the home visit activities and change with the growth of the child. All contribute to school readiness. After parents have been enrolled in FU for one year, this graph demonstrates how those parents rate their level of confidence in these aspects of parenting skills.All of them are above 4 on a rating of 1-5
We want to increase our ability to serve more people with the services we currently offer. Most of our programs have waiting lists. For example we’ve always had a wait list for home visits and have never had to advertise the program. In addition to increasing the number of children served by home visitation we also want to grow our fatherhood program and offer more parenting classes
Family development is more staff intensive that direct financial service. In order to really make an impact on the lives of the families we work we need to have more staff available to spend more time with families. In addition we want to offer more programming to help families improve their stability. Our plans are to examine a health marriage curriculum in addition to offering more housing counseling and money and debt management.
As I mentioned earlier STT is vital to the financial stability of the FIRC. We formed a task force of community business members to give us advice on how we might grow our profit margin. Lucy Kay worked with the committee and we have developed a wide plan of improvement. Chief among these improvements is a remodel of the thrift store. The remodel would improve the donation experience, improve the quality of the shopping experience and improve the working environment for FIRC employees to make it safer and more efficient. We anticipate that this remodel will happen this fall.
One of the things that we have always struggled with at the FIRC is that our programming requires space. Specifically as we plan to grow our parenting and fatherhood programs we need access to classroom space on a regular basis. The Board has approved the purchase of a small space in Dillon which we hope to remodel this winter and begin to use by the spring. We also plan to make the space available to other nonprofits in Summit County with similar needs.
Finally – Just a quick update on a recent innovative program which the Summit Foundation supported. In partnership with the El Pomar foundation, Vail Resorts Echo and Freeport McMoran the Summit Foundation provided funding for a cross county parenting grant which supports programs in both Lake and Summit Counties. The fundamental idea behind this grant was both to improve access to programming in each county, but also create a collaboration and increase communciation between three agencies with similar goals, YFS, FIRC and Full Circle, so that parents might enjoy even better access to programming.
The next stage of the grant is for the three agencies to begin to develop promotional materials together so that parents can find services regardless of whether they work or live in Summit or Lake Counties.
There are many ways you can help the FIRC.
The Summit Foundation has been an invaluable supporter of the FIRC via Donor advised funds, Summit County Cares, and via Capacity building. The FIRC has particularly benefited from Rural Philanthropy Days and opportunities to learn more about Board Development. There are always more ways to get involved. Our largest annual fundraiser, the Hearthstone Dinner and Silent Auction will take place on September 15th this year. We hope all of you will consider coming.
In addition we are always looking for volunteers to help with organizational development. In addition to our Board we have several community advisory committees, including program accountability, finances, development, and our STT advisory committee. And you can always help us by helping others in Summit County understand all that we do.