Family Center

Why We Do It family center

While 17% of Kentuckians live in poverty, roughly 20% of the residents in Northern Kentucky's urban communities are impoverished. The challenges of the working poor often lead to sacrifices – for example, heads of household in our area are often left wondering whether to pay for utilities, rent, food for their children, or clothing for their family members. In addition to the struggles families face, seniors living on fixed incomes also experience difficulties related to the rising costs of simple but essential items.

What We Do

Family Support
Family Support is a short-term intervention program that stabilizes the basic needs individuals and families and addresses the issues that have left or kept them in crisis. The intent of the program is to help families stabilize and maintain safe living conditions, while dealing with the obstacles that have prevented them from achieving self-sufficiency. We are the only agency who provides financial emergency assistance and food pantry services to families in all 8 Northern Kentucky counties. We are also the only agency that provides walk in services at various times throughout the week with no appointments needed to access our Choice Food Pantry, USDA Commodities, and clothing vouchers redeemable at our Clothing Closet.

Family Stability
Family Stability works with families once they have come out of their crisis. This component targets long-term linkages to services that will solidify their self-sufficiency goals. Programs include:
Housing Emergency Assistance Reaching the Homeless (Hearth). HEARTH works with families who have sustainable income and are now at risk of finding themselves homeless. This program connects these individuals to quality housing which will promote stability for their families.
Stable Families works with families who are at imminent risk of homelessness and who have school-aged children. When children have safe and stable housing this directly leads to them achieving greater educational success.

What We've Done

Through the Family Center, over 5,000 families received help during a crisis, had a basic need met, and received connection to other services in the community through Emergency Assistance. We provided food for 77 families through our Choice Food Pantry per week. 4,807 individuals received clothing vouchers for our Clothing Closet. 3,822 individuals received help with food through USDA Commodities.