For too long “the idea in child welfare has been saving children from their parents,” says Susan Kaplan, executive director of Friends of the Family, a family resource center in Van Nuys. “The family resource center movement says, ‘No, we need to save families for kids.”

That idea has sparked the development of hundreds of family resource centers (FRCs) around California. Now these FRCs have joined in a new statewide California Family Resource Association (CFRA).

Family resource centers try to give families “the support that leads to success,” to strengthen both families and neighborhoods, says Kaplan, now CFRA board president. For example, she says, her center provides “family literacy classes” to support parents as “first teachers.” Then, through the classes, parents “build relationships and begin to talk, maybe about something dangerous in the neighborhood, and explore what they can do. They become influential in solving problems.”

Four policy areas

CFRA’s first convention last April drew 300 people and defined key “policy areas:” family economic success, school readiness, child welfare, and mental health. CFRA aims to publicize the contributions of family resource centers in these areas and also to advocate for policies that support families’ success.

Stories of participants in four community-based programs show some ways that FRCs strengthen families.

Family support

Three years ago, “I was unemployed, my money was running out, and I needed help with my rent,” says Vernessa Hawkins, mother of two kids now eight and ten. “I had heard of the (Fairfield-Suisun) Family Resource Center, so I called and came in.”

A staff member “called around” and raised $75 to help with rent, recalls Hawkins. “It wasn’t enough, but if I hadn’t gotten it, I would have been headed for eviction.” Shortly after that, Hawkins went to work at the FRC.

Her experience shows the kind of two-way participation that family resource centers encourage. She provides child care, facilitates parenting classes—and has taken parenting classes herself. She runs the center’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program—and receives help with her own taxes.

Through the FRC, Hawkins got her children health insurance and “very well needed” school clothes. Her kids participate in events at the center and sometimes help their mom with child care.

They’ve also benefited from the class she took on helping kids manage anger, Hawkins says. “We have a magnet on the refrigerator with the steps you can take to deal with anger.” Now, when there’s a problem, “I can refer to it. I ask them. ‘What can you do to work this out?’”

School readiness

Efigenia Novoa, a Stockton stay-at-home mom, was already working with preschoolers Evelyn and Aida on “the alphabet, colors, and shapes,” but joined a school readiness program housed in an FRC and funded by First 5, “because I wanted someone to help me.”

Parent educator Lan Nguyen started visiting her home once a week: “She would read books and bring toys and books. She brought paper and paints, showed them how to write their names.” Novoa also learned— “to listen to (her children), talk with them, read with them, play with them. Lan loaned me music and I would dance with them.”

The program also brought children and parents together two afternoons a month. “In the park they would run and play with bubbles, balls, lots of activities,” says Novoa. “At the school they would sing and dance, be very active.”

Did the program help her daughters? “Yes, absolutely!” says Novoa. Evelyn is now in first grade and “the teacher says she’s doing great.”

Nguyen says “learning about the home language and culture” is key to the program’s success. “I learn to say hello and thank you in different languages, to show respect. And I find something in the home I admire, like a family picture. To make them feel special. Then they want you to come back!”

Family economic success

It was a fixer-upper, not Maritza Gutierrez’s dream house. To buy it, she says, “the whole family had to take a step back—no more eating out, no more going to movies, no more pedicures.” But owning their home is worth it, Gutierrez says: “It’s something stable to pass to your children and grandchildren. And it’s an investment.”

It wouldn’t have been possible without the financial education classes and Individual Development Account that Gutierrez found through New Economics for Women (NEW), a Los Angeles community organization that provides housing, child care, and social services for low-income families.

In the Individual Development Account, Gutierrez’s savings were matched two-to-one by government funds. The financial education classes helped her family get out of debt and start saving. Also key was “the positive attitude” at NEW, “that you could do it!”

In the financial education classes, teachers “had a topic and people discussed it—what would be the outcome if you did A or B?,” says Gutierrez. And students shared information—“It was really a community-based training.”

Now she’s seeing the benefits of home ownership for her children, eight, 13, and 15. The older kids have helped fix up the house: tearing out walls, installing a floor. “They learned responsibility,” Gutierrez says. “They’re growing up with the house.”

Mental health

When Amy Story’s friend died last February, her 16-year-old daughter Rachel came to live with Story. Rachel desperately needed counseling, but Story could not give permission until she got legal guardianship—that took a long time.

So she went to the Marshall Family Resource Center and talked to Healthy Start Coordinator Kristina Fabian. “She was really awesome,” says Story, “when I was trying to figure out what to do.”

In the family-resource-center spirit of flexible problem-solving, Fabian arranged for a young woman studying to be a counselor to meet informally with Rachel until official counseling started.

“It helped a lot,” says Story. “Rachel was starting to talk about things she’d never talked about before. About her mom—they did a lot of things that helped her realize, ‘Yes, this is why I’m so angry.’” Now both Rachel and Story’s son, a high school freshman, are going to the FRC to see counselors placed there by the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, which funds nurses, social workers, and counselors working through FRCs.

California Family Resource Association is now planning its legislative agenda for 2007. For more information, contact CFRA, 916-338-6633, www.californiafamilyresource.org