FAMILY and YOUTH COUNSELING AGENCY INC. [top]
Lake Charles, La.
Tier 1
When the Family Festival sponsored by Family and Youth Counseling Agency attracted nearly 2,000 people earlier this year to its informational booths, crafts, face painting, games, petting zoo, and live music, it was yet another example of the vital and essential role this organization plays in the community.

The annual event, planned primarily by the board of directors, is both a fundraiser and an opportunity for Family and Youth Counseling Agency (FYCA) to thank the community for its support. In addition to the $24,000 raised, the festival attracted more than 450 volunteers. One thousand teddy bears were donated, coordinated and secured by a board member, and were presented to each child at the event.

FYCA serves individuals, families, and the communities of Southwest Louisiana’s five-parish area guided by the belief that all individuals, families, and communities have the capacity to solve their own challenges when support, leadership, and resources are available, and when equity and inclusion serve as guiding principles.

In addition, human service professionals throughout Southwest Louisiana benefit from a conference coordinated by FYCA. Most recently attracting more than 180 professionals, the conference provides continued education in human services as FYCA shares its expertise with its peers.

The agency has been particularly successful in establishing collaborations and partnerships with other local organizations. A collaborative agreement with the Louisiana Association of Nonprofit Organizations promotes standards for excellence and ethical practice in the area’s nonprofit sector. The collaboration helps nonprofits that seek guidance and direction on best practices in nonprofit management and presents a wide range of nonprofit ethics and accountability topics to help neighboring agencies more effectively serve their communities.

FYCA created the Children and Families Action Network (CFAN) in 2006 with three other organizations. CFAN promotes mission-based advocacy among leaders of nonprofit organizations to increase civic engagement and participation that brings changes in public policy on behalf of children, families, and communities. CFAN has helped southwest Louisiana community leaders by contributing to the passage of two important bills that support children and families.

A collaboration with the state and other organizations in the wake of Hurricane Rita in 2005 ultimately led to another FYCA program, the Human Services Response Institute (HSRI), a disaster recovery organization. HSRI provides an immediate safety net for individuals and families through effective delivery of human services to support community recovery one family at a time.

FAMILY SERVICES OF KING COUNTY [top]
Seattle
Tier 2
Heads turned in Seattle this past summer when people hurrying to their jobs one morning came face-to-face with hundreds of life-size cutouts of kids. The “Don’t Just Look Away” campaign implemented by Family Services of King County successfully built awareness of both the crisis of homeless children and of the agency, raising the social consciousness of the community in a low-budget, high-impact way.

Over its 115-year history, Family Services has provided long-term solutions to strengthen families and change lives. Focusing on three program areas—homelessness prevention and intervention, domestic violence intervention and prevention, and mental health—Family Services serves thousands of individuals and families each year through direct social services and counseling.

This comprehensive approach to helping families and individuals reach stability and self-sufficiency includes Family Services’ efforts to address both each client’s immediate problems and the root causes of those problems.

In recent years, Family Services has actively educated its board of directors to increase the board’s fundraising role—including investment in capacity-building efforts—while also increasing understanding of the need for fiscal stability to ensure the organization can survive and thrive. Today, all 25 members of the board are actively engaged in organization activities and fundraising.

Just as the board of directors initiated a significant capital campaign to build or acquire a permanent home for the agency, board members learned that Seattle’s Rotary Club planned to help a local nonprofit with a “Centennial Project” to honor the local civic group’s 100th birthday in 2009.

Along with 41 others organizations, Family Services submitted a proposal to the club seeking to be chosen as the special Centennial Project. In June 2006 Family Services was indeed selected to be the winning project. Now, through the project, significant fundraising is being conducted on behalf of Family Services’ new facility, which will be named the Rotary Support Center for Families. In anticipation of the new facility, Family Services has begun planning enhanced programming in a number of areas, especially infant mental health.

To keep its programs among the best and most innovative in the region, Family Services follows national best practice models and tailors its services to meet community needs. Annual evaluation and reporting for each of the programs includes tracking performance goals and outcomes for funding contracts with programs shown to consistently meet or exceed contract goals each year.

THE VILLAGE NETWORK  [top]
Smithville, Ohio
Tier 3
Even though The Village Network has been providing services to children in Ohio for more than 60 years, its inventive programming and willingness to change with the times is a main factor in this organization’s continued growth and achievements, as evidenced in its 18 percent revenue growth and 23 percent program growth in the past year.

The Village Network (formerly Boys’ Village) treats both boys and girls with high-end needs at 11 Ohio locations, providing quality, intensive mental health programs for youth encompassing residential, day treatment, treatment foster care, respite care, therapeutic treatment for sexually reactive behavior and juvenile sex offenders, high-fidelity wrap-around programming, an evening reporting program, and crisis assessment services. Having evolved from a strictly procedural and operational mode, The Village Network board of directors is today a strongly focused policy board. The organization also repositioned itself from a traditional strategic planning model to a model that allows for effective systemic responsiveness to the agencies and communities that rely on Village Network services.

The Village Network has treated more than 1,200 youth sexual offenders and sexually reactive youth with its continuum of services. With this background, in 2007 The Village Network was the perfect organization to advocate for an amendment to Ohio Senate Bill 10 –The Adam Walsh Act. Before passage of the amendment, the original legislation rescinded the discretion of a juvenile judge to determine the type of notification required for juvenile sexual offenders at the conclusion of his or her treatment.

The Village Network successfully educated legislators that the law would encourage youth and their families to resist admitting offenses and naming victims, therefore lowering the likelihood of effective treatment and increasing the incidents of child sexual abuse. The amendment—passed into law in 2007—specified that youth not be sanctioned with mandatory registration as sex offenders. The Village Network was chosen to implement the high-fidelity wrap-around service program for Cuyahoga County youth who have been institutionalized for an average of 37 months, are in permanent custody, and have been identified for assignment to their deepest-end residential facilities.

With a primary goal of increasing the capacity of Cuyahoga County systems to better address the needs of these youth, providing greater access to services, and establishing a stable, permanent community-based or family living arrangement, the specialized Village Network’s treatment programming for high-end need youth allowed for a quick start-up. In just a few months, positive results were realized, thanks to the strength of The Village Network’s approach.

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Spirit of the Alliance Award Recipient:
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MYRTLE L. DUBLIN  [top]
FAMILY SERVICE ASSOCIATION
Egg Harbor Township, N.J.

When Myrtle L. Dublin began her tenure with Family Service Association on Sept. 22, 1975, as head cook for the organization’s Family Life Center, the organization no doubt was pleased to have hired a good cook. They could not have known the considerable impact Myrtle would have on the people she served, a number which grew significantly over the years without a single complaint from Myrtle.

In fact, during her 32 years with Family Service Association and until her recent retirement, Myrtle served more than 250,000 meals to children and families at the Family Center, including three generations of family members. She served every meal with a warm smile founded in the belief that “food and shelter are essential to the health and well-being of any family trying to make it in our society.”

While counselors and therapists provided clinical support at the Family Center, Myrtle provided other; equally vital supportive services to families that helped the entire team reinstate and re-establish the integral components of family development: trust, support, and love. In her role, she served the poor, the fragile, and the disenfranchised, making them all feel special.

Nor was cooking her only attribute. She made a difference in many lives through her constant and consistent encouragement, support, guidance, love, and wisdom, given freely to every child and parent that came through the Family Life Center program.

To honor her dedicated service and willingness to go above and beyond in supportive services, in 2003 Family Service Association President/CEO Jerome J. Johnson established an employee award in honor of Myrtle that recognizes any employee who also goes above and beyond in supportive services.

Myrtle’s coworkers at Family Service Association praised her humility, sincerity, and love for humanity. Program Manager Peter Genuardi said, “Through her meals she nourished the body; with her words of wisdom to the parents, and words of kindness to the children, she nourished the soul.”

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National Family Week
Connections Count Award Recipient:
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Family & Children’s Service  [top]
Minneapolis
Family and Children’s Service of Minneapolis receives this award for its superiority in exemplifying the National Family Week premise that children live better lives when their families are strong, and families are strong when they live in communities that connect them to economic opportunities, social networks, and services. The agency also demonstrates continued growth in its National Family Week plans for the November 2007 observance.

Family and Children’s Service held its third annual National Family Week Community Leadership Celebration in 2006 which was attended by more than 350 people. The event included a forum where public officials and families discussed issues and potential solutions for strengthening families; a resource fair including informational booths on civic engagement opportunities and resources for families; recognition of grassroots community leaders for their contributions in supporting strong families and communities; and a multicultural dinner and dance performance.

As a lead-in to National Family Week, Family and Children’s Service hosted a day-long conference offering 14 workshops to promote civic and policy engagement of grassroots leaders. More than 200 individuals attended this event and voted on the top public concerns they wanted to address in partnership in 2007 with Family and Children’s Service. Identified priorities included affordable housing, tenant rights, immigrant rights, public school change, and welfare reform.

Family and Children’s Service continues to be a year-round catalyst for positive social change and provides a voice for vulnerable children and families in the Twin Cities.

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National Family Week
Champion of the Year Award Recipients:
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[top]

Representative Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.)	Representative Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.)

Congressmen Patrick J. Kennedy (D-R.I.) and Jim Ramstad (R-Minn.) are the recipients of the National Family Week Champion of the Year Award. These Congressional representatives were chosen for this award based on their bipartisan support and introduction of legislation for mental health parity.

In March 2007, Kennedy and Ramstad introduced H.R. 1424 to improve the overall health of all Americans by granting greater access to mental health and addiction treatment while prohibiting health insurers from placing discriminatory restrictions on such treatment. Their bill expands the Mental Health Parity Act of 1996 by requiring group health and managed care plans operated under the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to offer benefits for mental health and addiction on the same terms as care for other diseases. The timing was critical as the current law expires at the end of 2007. Unlike a similar Senate bill, the House bill includes a comprehensive list of mandated covered conditions and enforcement provisions; it also allows state laws that provide greater benefits to retain their dominance.

Rep. Kennedy is serving his seventh term representing Rhode Island’s 1st Congressional District and is in his fifth year on the House Appropriations Committee, sits on the Subcommittee on the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies as well as the Subcommittee on the Departments of Science, State, Justice, and Commerce.

Rep. Ramstad has represented Minnesota’s 3rd Congressional District since 1990 and serves on the House Ways and Means Committee, Health Subcommittee and Oversight Subcommittee. Ramstad also co-chairs the Addiction Treatment and Recovery Caucus, as well as the Bipartisan Disabilities Caucus, Law Enforcement Caucus and Medical Technology Caucus.

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