FamilyCare is an umbrella for strategies that work to overcome barriers to student learning by building stronger links between communities and schools. FamilyCare works collaboratively with community partners, utilizes local resources and engages parents to educate other parents. FamilyCare developed out of LAEP’s work in 1989 to lower barriers to learning by linking community resources to the school site. FamilyCare has helped to design, plan and implement operational grants for four Healthy Start collaborativies across 11 schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District’s San Fernando high school cluster. FamilyCare’s initiatives focus predominately, but not exclusively, on the 18 schools of the San Fernando cluster; separate FamilyCare initiatives affect different schools or overlap in some.

Support students at the school site

• Administer Connections which provides individual assistance, engages community resources, encourages family support and promotes high academic expectations for elementary and middle school students as part of the Project GRAD comprehensive school reform program
• Hold Fostering Education workshops to help school staff understand the behaviors, needs and experiences of children who are not living with their birth parents
• Arrange for prospective teachers from the multi-lingual San Fernando High School Teacher Academy to mentor for students at O’Melveny Elementary School and train their parents on homework help strategies.

• Support student achievement and family literacy by engaging parents from all literacy levels in the Family Album Writing Workshop in which they write about their own experiences
• Engage parents throughout FamilyCare activities to train others

• Strengthen the role of parents as the child’s first teacher (School Readiness) through home visitation by trained community members
• Establish family libraries in the homes of families with very young children
• Provide workshops for parents by parents on strategies to support their child’s preparedness for school

• 22 health promoters trained to provide health and mental health workshops across campuses
• Operational grant funded for Action-4-Kids Healthy Start program at Broadous Elementary, the planning process for which had been co-coordinated by FamilyCare
• Connections offices opened at six elementary and middle schools in the San Fernando cluster staffed by LAEP Connections staff, including campus managers, case workers and parent outreach workers at each school site. LAEP’s Connections will expand to additional San Fernando cluster schools later in the school year.
• Fostering Education workshops held for cluster counselors and organizational facilitators from all LAUSD clusters and teachers, support staff, administrators, parent leaders, and office staff from five LAUSD clusters.
• Family Album Writing Workshop offered at multiple schools in the San Fernando, Lincoln, Grant, Belmont, and Sylmar/Verdugo Hills clusters.
• Nine School Readiness paraprofessionals trained and each working with five to seven families to promote parent understanding of the development of their 0-3-year-old children. The paraprofessionals also provide workshops on early learning skills at FamilyCare Healthy Kids collaborative schools in the San Fernando cluster.

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