We solve the problem of parents endlessly searching for vital services by placing a 100% Family Center in every community.
The 100% Family Center meets an urgent need. The stories shared in the books Anna, Age Eight, and David, Age 14, reveal a New Mexico that has yet to create systems of accessible support services for all its children, students, and families. The lack of vital services is referred to as the adverse social determinants of health, as access to services like health care determines our quality of life. Half a century of research reveals that a lack of vital services like healthcare can lead to untreated health challenges, adverse childhood experiences, trauma, substance use disorders, and costly public health and education challenges.
In our 100% New Mexico countywide surveys across New Mexico, residents report that a third to half of some communities may be unable to access vital services. The barriers include:
- Costs too much
- The waitlist is too long
- No insurance coverage
- I can’t find a provider
- Appointment times don’t work for me (a concern for working parents)
- It’s too far to travel
- I don’t have reliable transportation
- I feel bad or worried about going
- I don’t know where to get this service
- They don’t speak my language
- I was told I don’t qualify
- This service does not exist near me
Instead of making an overwhelmed and exhausted mom, dad, or caregiving grandparents spend hours or days seeking help across an entire county or region, we can instead put all ten vital services on one spot. The 100% Family Center can address many service barriers that families report. The research guiding the 100% Family Center’s development is based on decades of research focused on evidence-informed strategies for increasing the effectiveness, accessibility, and innovation of services.
A simple strategy that solves so much
The proposed 100% Family Center has many functions to meet the vital needs of residents, ensuring their access to the ten vital services for surviving and thriving. The 100% Family Center will align with all service providers to strengthen existing services that prevent adverse childhood experiences, family trauma, social adversity, and all related health challenges. The goal of the 100% Family Center is simple: provide the vital services that go upstream to prevent problems before they start.
We connect to existing services & create new ones.
The 100% Family Center will be unlike other parent centers across the nation in that it not only has the staff to link family members to local services, but it has staff actively working to improve and expand services. The local 100% New Mexico initiative can be housed at the 100% Family Center, focused on improving the services provided onsite, online, and through navigation (to cut through hours of voicemails and a frustrating lack of callbacks and support). The work of the local 100% initiative is vital as we know from surveys that we must continue to advocate for the improvement of local services so we can say with confidence, “We refer families to services” and know such services genuinely exist.
The Center can be based at an existing organization already serving family members, with the extra funding, staffing, technology, and resources to expand to meet the needs of all family members, with extended hours for weeknight and weekend support (when working parents are free). The one-stop service hub will provide the following services onsite or use the telehealth model to offer web-based services, a popular model for rural communities or underserved urban areas lacking behavioral health care, and nine other services.
We’re ensuring ten vital services.
The 100% New Mexico initiative, a program of NMSU’s Anna, Age Eight Institute, provides each county with a collaborative process for transforming our under-resourced communities into fully-resourced environments, creating local access to services described in the book 100% Community: Ensuring ten vital services for surviving and thriving. We are making a system-wide change in each county, creating a seamless system of family services where ten service sectors are working in alignment with local networks of organizations empowered by technology.
5 SURVIVING SERVICES
Medical/Dental Care
Behavioral health care
Food security programs
Housing security programs
Transportation services
5 THRIVING SERVICES
Parents supports
Early childhood learning programs
Fully-resourced community schools
Youth mentor programs
Job training
Centers are staffed to ensure health equity and access.
Center staff can include positions for a center director, administrator, research and data specialist, service directory manager, training and event facilitators, navigators, and communication/IT. Staffing can include a local 100% New Mexico initiative coordinator and project developers focused on quality improvement across the county’s ten service sectors.
What about funding & return on investment?
Each center can be funded through state, county, and city government funding, reprioritizing budgets that make the health and safety of every New Mexican child and student the number one priority. The Center can be seen as vital a service as schools or the police and fire department, institutionalized within local government. Suppose a city and county spend 20 million dollars annually on law enforcement. In that case, a fraction of that invested in a one-stop service hub with behavioral health care can reduce family involvement with the police, sheriff, child welfare, and emergency services.
What will your community's 100% Family Center look like?
We’re going upstream to prevent problems.
The return on investment in the 100% Family Center model arrives through successful students and self-sufficient families that feel empowered. From decades of research focused on the social determinants of health, investing in vital services improves all students’ and parents’ health, safety, and economic outcomes. For those working in our State Departments of Public Health, Human Services, and Child Welfare to prevent child abuse, neglect, violence against self and others, and substance use disorder-illness, injury, and fatalities, the 100% Family Center is how we do it. We ensure service access while improving the quality of services.
Centers are part of local economic development.
Investing in the 100% Family Center model gives each county the best opportunity to support children ready to start school trauma-free, excel in 13 years of public school and graduate with the skills for job-readiness within a productive workforce. A mom and her newborn having access to ten services through the one-stop service hub is how we transform New Mexico from a place of service disparities to health equity.
We are designing the Centers to be accessible and inviting places for children, students, and their families to access services that impact their overall quality of life. Today, a struggling parent or youth may have nowhere to go for support before it becomes a crisis. This changes when the local 100% Family Center opens.
Join the 100% Family Center Project.
The 100% Family Center will become integral to every town and city, part of our comprehensive 100% New Mexico initiative. We know the challenges and how to fix them. All that’s lacking is the buy-in to make the health, safety, and education of families the number one priority of New Mexico. First, complete one of our self-paced courses below, then contact us to join our 100% Family Center Project to review our proposals, budgets, and technology, and staffing requirements. The Center is the game-changer for New Mexico.
Did you know? Our transformational 100% New Mexico initiative is guided by web-based, self-paced courses provided free to all New Mexicans.
