The Centers Programs Work

The Centers have "free programs to help families. There are all kinds to do with your family like Playgroup and Family Fun Nights. They also come to our home and do activities with the kids to help us all spend time together."

Calendar




See what's going on at the five Family Centers in the county by checking out the Calendars.

Family Centers

The McKean County Family Centers Goals

  1. Economic self-sufficiency for families through adult education, training and employment.

    2. To ensure that families gain access to resources that will help them become more self-sufficient, the Family Centers provide a variety of referral and linkage services that enable families to participate in adult education, training and employment.

  2. Healthy development and health care services for children.

    3. The timely immunization of young children helps guarentee that they are starting out with a solid foundation for health. Through the PAT program, enrolled children are tracked to ensure immunizations are up to date. Due to medical advancements, vaccines can change annually. Since this can be quite confusing for parents, families often need regular reinforcments to keep up with immunization schedules. Immunization clinics (open to any child in the community and provided by Department of Health personnel) are offered free of charge on a quarterly basis at each Family Center to supplement immunizations offered by area physicians. Information and resources about safety, prenatal care, health insurance (MA, CHIP), early intervention, nutrition, infant care, oral health, childcare and tobacco cessation are relayed to families through a variety of venues.

  3. Positive child development through effective parenting, early intervention and outreach activities.

    4. The Family Centers help promote positive nurturing of children, good parenting practices and age appropriate development. Parents as Teachers home visits a relationship is formed between the home visitor and parent. Once this is established several goals are targeted such as attending to concrete needs, promoting the parent's self-efficacy, promoting the parent-child relationship, encouraging good child care preactices, understanding developmental stages of childhood and facilitating the resolition of relationship issues. Center activities provide an opportunity for parents to learn and grow in a group setting with other parents.

  4. Preservation of the family unt as the foundation for success for children.

    5. Family support resources through the Family Centers help build healthy marriages and families, and actively engages fathers in family life. Services are available to foster, adoptive and child welfare personnel to provide a continuum of services for families. Family Center supports are available to families before, during or after their involvement in other more intensive county services. Additionally, the Centers serve as a friendly and safe place for supervised visitations of children in court custody. And finally, Intensive Family Center Services for high-risk families referred by the McKean County Children and Youth Services agency is available.

  5. Seamless, comprehensive and easily accessed network of services for children and families.

    6. By co-locating and relocating staff from other agancies to the Family Center, space and resources are shared and utilized in a more efficient manner. Cross training between Family Center Staff and other agencies in order to inform each other about services available to families. The use of a countywide directory, email distributions, websites and press coverage has provided information to families about services.

The McKean County Family Centers is a program of The Guidance Center.