Best Practice: Family Resource Centers

Reprinted from CommLINK

Austin ISD and community partners are working to improve student achievement by stabilizing families with five new Family Resource Centers at high-needs schools. One center is now open; a second is scheduled to open in January 2010; and three more centers will open in fall 2010.

Addressing Student Mobility and Stabilizing Families

The Family Resource Centers are meant to enrure that students are in school and ready to learn through addressing basic family needs. Adverse family or community situations—such as moving from school to school, living in unstable family situations, dealing with unmet health needs, or facing other stresses of poverty—can have a negative affect on students’ attendance and academic achievement. Each center will serve as a one-stop support center for families, and will coordinate resources to better address these needs.

Families of students at the host schools, neighboring schools, and in the community can receive support from the Family Resource Center in five areas—housing, employment, access to healthcare, education, and social/family connections.

Each center will have a small staff including a manager, social worker, volunteers, and a team of community members to guide the activities, align family services within the community, and provide guidance. The centers are modeled after the Family Resource Center at one of AISD's middle schools, now in its third year of operation. In 2008-09, 360 families received support from that resource center.

A Call to Partners

The centers are being developed in partnership between AISD, The Austin Project, Austin Voices, the St. John Community School Alliance, Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services, and other community groups.

Community partnerships are a major component of the centers. Current partners include the University of Texas School of Nursing, A Glimmer of Hope Foundation, the City of Austin, Texas Department of Health and Human Services, Stone Community Church, Iglesias El Shaddai, and AmeriGroup.

January 2010