Family Strengthening Awards
Past Winners
2008 Winners
Our Daily Bread Employment Center
Catholic Charities of Baltimore, MD
By offering a variety of supportive services, Our Daily Bread Employment Center (ODBEC) helps its clients overcome their barriers to employment—such as criminal backgrounds, lack of education or work experience, addictions, transportation issues, poor interviewing skills—and enables them to better support themselves and their families.
ODBEC houses a daily hot meal program for over 600 people, a residential program for formerly homeless men aimed at employment and permanent housing; and a program that enables formerly incarcerated men to successfully reintegrate into the community.
The site also offers an array of services provided by Catholic Charities and its partners, including eviction prevention services, emergency and referral services, full job development and placement, adult basic education, recovery support, assistance with criminal background issues, access to computers and telephones, mail distribution, GED classes, workshops on home ownership, and financial literacy and healthy relationships classes.
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The Homebase Program
Catholic Charities Brooklyn and Queens
This program was created and funded by the New York City Department of Homeless Services to provide homeless prevention services to at-risk families. Catholic Charities works closely with families who are on the brink of entering the shelter system so that this emergency step can either be shortened or eliminated all together.
Since its creation, Homebase has helped more than 1,700 families by keeping them in stable housing and helping them address their barriers to self-sufficiency. For instance, to better handle their finances and eliminate debt, clients learn how to manage money by developing household budgets. They also receive short-term financial assistance and access to public programs.
The agency’s case managers advocate to landlords on their client’s behalf, provide family mediation, and assist in obtaining legal services in order to help clients communicate more effectively and make safe, responsible housing decisions. Those without home phones are given access to cell phones, which enables them to communicate with landlords, lawyers, and potential employers.
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The Kinship Care Resource Network
Catholic Family Center of Rochester, NY
With a growing number of children in the United States being raised by kinship caregivers, the Kinship Care Resource Network (KCRN)—a collaborative effort between the Catholic Family Center and four other local agencies—works to support the needs of families in which a child is being raised by a relative other than the biological parent, such as a grandparent, aunt, or sibling.
KCRN staff members work with families to ensure that caregivers and their families have access to financial benefits and other supports to meet their basic needs; increase kinship caregivers’ knowledge of their rights, responsibilities, and available services; provide parenting skills for the kinship caregivers; and improve the physical and emotional well-being of caregivers and the children in their care.
In 2007, KCRN helped 483 children and 331 caregivers, an increase of 42 percent from the previous year.
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St. Margaret’s Shelter
Catholic Charities of Spokane, WA
St. Margaret's Shelter is an emergency and transitional shelter for homeless women and their children and for mothers with high-risk newborns. St. Margaret’s, however, provides much more than a roof over a family’s head. It strives to improve families’ self-sufficiency and economic conditions by providing case management, tutoring, parenting classes, and life skills and job training. For example, the shelter’s economic literacy program offers weekly classes, focusing on money management and budgeting, being a savvy renter, and honing employment skills.
The shelter’s "Portfolio Project" offers classes in renter's rights and responsibilities, which gives families critical information about their legal rights and responsibilities as renters. With this information, they are empowered when talking to landlords or when they seeking housing, signing leases, and becoming tenants. Once families leave the shelter, many supportive services continue.
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2007 Winners
El Programa Hispano Program
Catholic Charities of Oregon
El Programa Hispano has provided services to low-income Latino immigrant families in the greater Portland, OR, metropolitan area since 1982. Its mission is threefold: to increase self-sufficiency within the Latino community, to empower individuals to achieve a better quality of life, and to promote mutual understanding and respect among cultures.
The agency is well known in the large and growing Latino community as a culturally-specific agency that focuses its work on non- or limited-English speaking Latino immigrant families.
Whether working to a address the short-term crisis or providing longer-term services offered through the center – such as evening community education classes and workshops on topics like English as a Second Language (ESL), parenting skills, basic computer skills, how to apply for a job in the United States, or how to become a U.S. citizen – El Programa Hispano works to solve and meet emerging challenges for the Latino community in Oregon.
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The Office of Economic Opportunity
Catholic Social Services of Charlotte, NC
Located in a region of North Carolina where economic conditions are quite difficult and opportunities are limited, OEO/CSS works to help families to develop the skills needed to make better financial choices for building a more secure future.
One of its programs—the Far West Families First (FWFF) program—matches struggling families with ecumenical faith teams who provide support and encouragement to help families reach goals they set for themselves. Such goals might relate to debt reduction, credit building, health issues, housing concerns, education, employability, etc. In a supportive relationship, the team helps the family understand and learn the skills needed for successful problem solving and helps the family locate outside resources when needed.
OEO/CSS also provides families with counseling opportunities to help them work through challenges that impede family development and stability.
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The Southside Family Center
Catholic Charities of Hartford, CT
The Southside Family Center works to provide a “family-centered and strength-based” environment in which both children and parents have access to a comprehensive array of programs and services committed to strengthening and promoting healthy family relationships, as well as encouraging economic security through education and employment.
Southside’s highly capable staff works in partnership with ethnically diverse families from the City of Hartford in need of services, support, leadership development, early childhood education, adult education and training, crisis intervention, and stabilization.
By providing a safe and nurturing environment for young children, Southside enables parents to take the classes and receive the support necessary to learn how to strengthen their families. Such programs include early childhood education, case management and home visits to at-risk parents, GED and ESL instruction, basic computer classes, money management workshops, and parent support groups and parenting classes.
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The Thorpe Family Residences
Catholic Charities of New York, NY
The Thorpe Family Residence provides shelter and services to homeless families in the Bronx by helping mothers develop the life skills necessary to secure employment and to prepare for independent living.
Founded by the Dominican Sisters of Sparkill, NY, Thorpe Family Residence is committed to helping families achieve their full potential by connecting them to the resources they need, be it housing counseling and referrals to secure affordable housing or after-school programs and tutoring provided with the help of volunteers from St. Thomas Aquinas High School and Fordham University.
Individually and as a team, the staff at Thorpe Family Residence tries to create hope in the lives of mothers and children. They work with mothers to set and maintain goals for getting off welfare by participating in job training and education programs.
Beyond empowering its families, Thorpe Family Residence also encourages them to advocate on the behalf of others. Residents are a voice in the community and are involved in a number of local community activities, advocating for the homeless and the disadvantaged.
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2006 Winners
The Family Resource Center
Catholic Community Service of the Diocese of Juneau
The Family Resource Center of Catholic Community Service of the Diocese of Juneau provides a family-friendly environment in which parents and children can access a comprehensive array of services focused on family strengthening, such as financial literacy, nutrition, anger management, and parenting classes, extensive home visitation, case management services, and life skills education to families in transition.
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The Family Self-Sufficiency Program
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago
The Family Self-Sufficiency Program of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago provides comprehensive, long-term case management services to low-income families in Lake County to assist them in achieving and enhancing economic self-sufficiency.
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Family Literacy Program
Catholic Community Services of McDowell County, WV
The comprehensive Family Literacy Program of Catholic Community Services of McDowell County, WV, addresses the educational needs of people of all ages in McDowell County from a family perspective. The program consists of GED, job skills training, long distance college classes, computer classes, parenting, survival skills, early child intervention, and pre-school, after school, and summer school programs.
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2005 Winners
Pio Decimo Center
Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona
Located in the Barrio Santa Rosa community in Tucson since 1946, Catholic Community Services of Southern Arizona's Pio Decimo Center is a multipurpose, neighborhood-based center that serves low-income residents of all ages, helping them to improve their economic conditions. The Center offers individuals and families a variety of supports and services including job training, child care, early education, after school programs, programs for teens and seniors, housing, food assistance, and health care.
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Diocese of Yakima Housing Services
Catholic Charities of Yakima, WA
The Diocese of Yakima Housing Services is a program of Catholic Charities of Yakima, WA. Since its inception in 1998, DYHS has built more than 200 affordable housing units for farm workers and other low-income families in seven developments throughout Central Washington. The supportive services offered to residents empower families to learn new skills and grow as part of a vibrant community.
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Gateway to Financial Fitness Program
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Louis
Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of St. Louis' Gateway to Financial Fitness Program helps low-income families in the St. Louis area learn and practice good personal finance skills and build economic security, especially through homeownership. Armed with knowledge and support, participants have been able to purchase homes, make home improvements, obtain better rental housing, save money, reduce debt, put tax refunds to good use, and secure insurance and workplace benefits.
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