Community Family Guidance Center Receives $25,000 Grant to Expand Programs

The Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center has granted $25,000 to Community Family Guidance Center in Cerritos to support their Parenting Program for the 2012-2013 fiscal year.

This program seeks to increase family communication, improve relationships, reduce parental stress, and teach effective limit setting, with the overall goal of decreasing the risk of child abuse & neglect and reducing behavioral problems in families. 

Among the population of children served at the Center, 41 percent act out in school or at home due to disruptive and defiant disorders, while parents do not have access to the services they need to learn how to effectively deal with these issues. In addition, in 2009 in southeast LA County (where the Center provides the majority of their services) there were 18,094 referrals for child abuse and neglect. These factors paint a picture of a population in need of support and education services to help strengthen families and ensure happy, healthy childhoods. 

With the new grant funds, the Center’s Parenting Program will use a whole-family approach to help parents and children achieve their goals of improving family relationships and decreasing the risk of abuse and neglect.  Free parent and child group sessions will be held weekly and offered in either English or Spanish. In addition, all participants will receive short-term individual, couples, and family counseling and will have the opportunity to work with case managers to learn how to access community resources.

This will be the second year the Center has offered this program. Past participants have expressed their appreciation for the education and peer-support they receive in the groups, and have reported fewer family arguments and children behaving more responsibly. In this next round of sessions, the Center hopes to help increase parent satisfaction in their own parenting skills, parent-child communication skills, and parents’ ability to set limits with their children.

The Center is collaborating with the Downey Unified, , Norwalk-La Mirada, and Bellflower Unified School Districts, which will provide referrals and space to conduct the programs. 

For more information about the Center and the Parenting Program funded by Kaiser Permanente Downey Medical Center, please contact the Center’s Director of Development, Marcia Salvary, at (562) 924-5526.

-- Community Family Guidance Center