The Family Services Center and one of the families it serves received awards from the Texas Department of Prevention and Early Intervention at the September PEI conference in Houston.
The Family Service Center’s unique services were recognized and they received a first place Prevention Innovation Award.
FSC Outreach includes the Coffee Café, Superhero campaign, Conversational Spanish, Unplug and Get Connected, CAP bracelets, and Nice Parent classes.
Conversational Spanish
In an effort to become more sensitive to the clients, Family Services Center (FSC) enlisted the help of Howard Payne University’s (HPU) Spanish Department. By providing an Intern, HPU is teaching Family Services Center’s staff basic conversational Spanish. While FSC does have native Spanish speakers on staff, any staff member desiring to learn basic Spanish phrases to help guide their clients through services has been given the opportunity to learn. As a result, FSC staff has become more sensitive to those struggling to learn English and it has made a huge impact on the Spanish speaking client.
Superhero Character Visits
The goal of the Superhero Character Visits is to reach out to parents, letting them know about the parenting classes offered by Family Services Center and encourage them to participate. The FSC Educators group, visits the childcare center at the end of the day when parents pick up their children. The educator takes small gifts, like bottles of bubbles, to the children and parenting class information to distribute to the parents. Parents are given flyers about the Superhero visits a few days ahead of time so they can bring their cameras for pictures if they choose. FSC makes an impression on the parents with hopes to sign up new clients.
You are Your Child’s Super Hero Campaign
This campaign helps to remind parents that they are their child’s super hero. This includes superhero t-shirts, billboards, flyers, posters, and actual Superheroes. They attend the child care centers, parades, and FSC community events. Family Services Center provides classes for parents to discover “Super Hero” tools, skills and ideas to help build strong, healthy families. The t-shirts are seen every day in the community and parents are wearing them with pride.
Project-Unplug and get Connected
The objective of this program is to help people think of parenting in a positive way and reach as many parents as possible with the parenting classes by dispelling the barrier that taking a parenting class means you are a bad parent. FSC hosts a Family Night event where they challenge the community to spend one hour a week without electronic devices and connect with their children face to face. Grilled hotdogs, simple games, and crafts, are all provided and FCS partners with a local photographer to take free family photos. Brochures were given out discussing “Web Dangers”- Parenting Classes are now thought of as Super Hero Skills.
Nice Parent Award
Tickets were given to parents in the community caught being a good parent and these tickets were placed in a drawing for recipients to receive a prize during the months of December thru February. Over 40 parents were given the “Nice Parent” ticket and received a consolation gift with FSC’s Parenting Class information. The staffs were rewarded as much as the parents by witnessing the reactions parents had when being recognized in this way. Both the parents and the FSC staff learned that a little praise and encouragement goes a long way.
Coffee Café
Coffee Café brings parents together just to have a conversation and coffee. It is planned at the same time as GED and ESL classes so that the participants can get to know the FSC educators and staff. It is helpful in building relationships with existing parents in the Parenting Wisely classes and those parents who may just need to have adult conversation.
Community Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness
Local hospital, Brownwood Regional Medical Center supplies 2000-5000 medical bracelets to Family Services Center. The FSC volunteers stuff the printed Child Abuse Prevention and Awareness information into each bracelet and distributed them to the elementary schools, and health fairs. BRMC medical and ER staff wear the bracelets throughout the month of April. The medical bracelet is a reminder of children hospitalized due to abuse.
FSC also received the Resilient Family Award- Honorable Mention – The Vazquez Family
The Vazquez family has shown an incredible resilience in adapting to their new surroundings and becoming active members of the community. Mr. Vazquez was transferred to his current position in a local factory, while Mrs. Vazquez began to make a home for their family. She became familiar with the community by searching for community resources. She spoke little English upon her arrival but in no time she found the resources to help her family. Family Service Center workers say Mrs. Vazquez and her daughters would enter the building with smiles and enthusiasm that brighten up the office. The school age daughter who was struggling in the beginning started to receive As and Bs in school. Mrs. Vazquez continued to seek out ways to improve her ability to speak English and joined parenting classes, where she spoke more English with classmates. During the Center’s 10 week program, she met more people, made friends and empowered herself by learning all she could during the parenting classes. She joined a local church and began working part time teaching children in Spanish. The Vazquez family completed the program and everyone shared in the excitement, watching this family grow and find a home in the community.
