As readers of our 100% Blog, you’ll know that the 100% Family Center: One Stop Service Hub has been a keystone project of the 100% New Mexico Initiative for years. Now, a dozen counties are developing their own family center proposals to create a New Mexico where every child, student, and family has access to the services described in 100% Community: Ensuring 10 vital services for surviving and thriving. You’ll be hearing more about the 100% Family Center proposals, return on investment, funding, and launching as 2024 starts up. It’s our number one goal to create a statewide network of family centers to move our state up toward being rated by the Annie E. Casey’s Kids Count Report as the safest place to be a child (as opposed to where we are currently: one of the most unsafe). We are driven by a shared vision to make each child our number one priority. Ten excellent questions and answers guide you to a future New Mexico where thriving can be the new norm.

1. Does the center require a new building or new technologies?

The 100% Family Center is designed to extend and enhance a current local organization that is already engaged with families. It could be a health clinic, a youth center, a community college, a school, or a parent center that can house more services, including web-based “telehealth” tech and providers. With a visionary organization seeking to grow, the family center concept provides the model for providing and growing services, working in alignment with all city and county agencies. With high speed internet access, even a locality with few resources can create a state-of-the-art family resource center that brings ten services to local visitors through the telehealth model. In our well-connected centers, service providers from across town, the state, or the nation can “beam in” to center devices in family-friendly environments to ensure service delivery.

Side note: In Santa Fe, a group of artists worked to convert an old bowling alley into a multi-million dollar exhibition/art scene/cultural center/tourist attraction. This showcases how imagination and determination can convert any old building into something inspiring. This demonstrates how future 100% Family Centers may be created from any almost any building (ask us how).

2. What costly problems does a 100% Family Center solve?

The list of problems that result from lack of access to services is very long and interconnected, all documented yearly by public health, public education, and child welfare. The data tells a story of predictable and preventable problems that await a solution. Almost every public health, education, and safety challenge can be traced back to families lacking access to the vital services that determine the quality of life for every child, student, and adult.

1. Substance use disorder-related violence, injury, illness, and fatalities
2. Child maltreatment and lack of school readiness for those entering kindergarten
3. Trauma leading to poor school achievement and school dropout
4. Lack of job readiness, unemployment, and lack of taxable incomes
5. Workplace challenges of absenteeism and arriving unable to perform tasks
6. Untreated physical and mental health challenges that become costly illnesses
7. Stresses on our legal and court systems
8. An overburdened child welfare system where children fall through the cracks
9. Violent behaviors impacting public safety, crime, and incarceration rates
10. The generational cycle of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) leads to one out of four New Mexicans reporting four or more ACEs, with the most common being physical abuse, emotional abuse, and household adults abusing substances.

Suppose you work in any capacity to prevent these problems, from the AGs’ office to schools and hospitals. In that case, the root causes of the challenges are communities without the capacity to ensure vital services for 100% of families. In the term used by public health researchers, our families endure the adverse social determinants of health.

3. How does a county know what service barriers exist?

We’ve been asking parents if they can get to vital services and the answer, for the most part, has been a resounding “It’s a huge challenge.” Local and state elected officials are reading the 100% New Mexico initiative county reports on service barriers to learn that our families can’t get to services because of many barriers. The 100% Family Center is designed to address the barriers and become each county’s central hub for strengthening existing services and building new ones if needed. We also know who in the county already provides services so we are not duplicating any user-friendly services. We’re all about alignment with innovative partners.

4. How does a center solve the barrier of “unfriendly hours” for working parents?

Here is an easy fix. Most services are offered 9–5, Monday through Friday. The problem is that working parents can’t access those services. Our 100% Family Center is designed for accessibility including being available evenings and weekends. All of this can be done with staff being creative and flexible with their 40-hour workweek.

5. How does the center solve the barrier of “cost”?

Cost is a huge barrier to some services that is completely fixable with local and state support. Most counties have service agencies that provide a sliding scale for fees for many services thus reducing cost as a barrier, but many parents can’t find them. The 100% Family Center identifies all the services offered for free or at a sliding scale and lists them in a constantly updated web-based directory. The center also provides social worker-led navigation services both onsite and online that link family members to those services in the county or region.

6. How does the center solve the barrier of “I don’t have reliable transportation to services?”

This huge barrier impacts access to almost all the vital services for surviving and thriving. Across the nation, solutions exist, including subsidized app-ordered ride-sharing, coordinated use of current van services, multi-use school bus systems, AI-analyzed public transport to identify and meet needs, and a 100% Family Center shuttle. Especially in rural environments, the solutions require alignment and creativity of city, county, state, and school government leaders, along with the private sector, to create public transport. The 100% Family Center project developer can guide this multi-agency process.

7. How does the center refer families to services that don’t exist?

This is where our family center is different from all others. Not only do we have staff to link visitors to existing services, but we also have staff whose job is to identify service gaps and develop projects to remove them. Each center will have project developers and quality improvement specialists to grow and improve services in ten service sectors across the county. That’s our secret sauce for ending service barriers and transforming the adverse social determinants of health into positive ones.

8. How is the center staffed?

Each county will be different as the center is customized to meet the needs of local families. Staffing ideas start with reading the 100% County Survey Report for an individual county to identify the need for services locally, and the specific barriers to fix them. Some centers might focus more on behavioral health and require social workers who can bill for hours (which supports a sustainable model). Other centers might need staff to initiate projects to create affordable and safe housing. While each center will provide services onsite, online, or through navigation to ten services, the staffing will be designed to meet the biggest needs. We add that the 100% Family Center works in alignment with the local 100% New Mexico initiative to take the vital steps required to grow services and partnerships with health councils and all higher education health initiatives.

9. How does a center address workforce shortages with healthcare providers, teachers, and social workers?

This is the elephant in the room that can no longer be ignored. Each county requires a strategic plan to “grow its own” healthcare providers, teachers, and social workers. Today, shortages exist in these three critical areas. The 100% Family Center’s project developers can work with city, county, school, and higher ed to create a local program that engages high school students in these three careers, supports their enrollment in and successful experience with colleges and universities, and works to place graduates locally. This big lift is entirely possible with visionary workforce development partners.

10. How is the center funded?

Many funding streams can launch a 100% Family Center today. To be perfectly candid, with a federal budget in the trillions, a state budget in the billions, and local government budgets combined to result in millions, it’s not about the money. It’s about the priority. If our children and students’ health, education, and safety matter most, then the financial resources exist. There are ways to staff the center sustainably with service providers, such as social workers, who can bill Medicaid. The 100% Family Center will have staff who are experts in development, fundraising, and private and public sector partnerships. It’s all about the vision of New Mexico, where it can be the safest place to be a child and the return on investment is 33 well-resourced counties where every family member, from newborns to grandparents, thrives.

100% Family Center proposals are being developed and pitched today. Your support is most welcome. For more information about the 100% Family Center: One Stop Service Hub and local proposals being developed in your county’s 100% New Mexico initiative, please visit our vision, our map to local initiatives, and our web-based course on “Building a Family Center” within our Training Center. Feel free to contact us.