Thank you for visiting our Web site. The Midwest Learning Center of Family Focus, Inc. provides training, professional development, and program partnerships to ensure that family support principles are integrated in human service practice nationwide to strengthen families. In all of our work we are committed to:
Building on the skills of program staff at all levels who work with families
Cultivating Parent Leadership
Advancing best practices, capacity building, and program development
Professional development to meet your staff's needs and build on their strengths.
High-quality, innovative training curricula developed and delivered by expert trainers.
A forum for advocacy and discussion to advance the family support field.
An online bookstore that houses the most widely used family support tools.
A Family Support America legacy subscription providing access to research papers, publications, and articles spanning more than 25 years.
Customized training based on your organizations specific needs.
Programs to serve family support constituencies developed and delivered with partner organizations.
What's New?
The Midwest Learning Center launches the Family Support America Legacy Subscription 25 Years of Service
The Family Support America Legacy Subscription materials are among the most highly cited and utilized in the family support field and are now available online! The benefit of your subscription will be to access over 300 useful articles, research, evaluations, fact sheets, magazines, reports, programs, publications, meeting output, and papers representing Family Support America’s legacy of 25 years from 1981-2006.
The Midwest Learning Center rolls out the new curriculum on:
Learning about Trauma and Children Exposed to Violence
This training was developed collaboratively among multiple Strengthening Families Illinois Partner agencies:
The Midwest Learning Center for Family Support
Chicago Safe Start
Illinois Department of Human Services
Illinois Department of Children and Family Services
Providers can play a major role in helping prevent future trauma and mitigating the current impact it is having on families. The Curriculum is designed specifically as a starting point to increase early childhood providers? knowledge and ability to help them become a strong resource for families struggling with these challenges.
At this workshop participants will:
Increase their awareness and understanding of trauma.
Be able to generalize the trauma experience for children, families, communities and themselves.
Be able to recognize general symptoms or behaviors children can experience when traumatized or exposed to violence.
Become familiar with the tools to support children, families and care givers who have experienced trauma and/or exposure to violence.
Learn how to prevent future trauma and exposure to violence that may lead to trauma.
Midwest Learning Center presents
at
Opening Minds
The Chicago Early Education, Child Care and School-Age Conference
January 22-24, 2009 Chicago, IL.
Training or consultation on these and other presentations is available through the Midwest Learning Center Contact Us
Learning About Trauma and Children Exposed to Violence Presenter: Margie Perzynski
Nearly 70 individuals attended the first overview of the training. It was a 90 minute synopsis of the Learning About Trauma and Children Exposed to Violence curriculum. This curriculum is actually designed to be presented over six hours. The training was rated by participants as 97% highly useful to work with children and families.
Participants were asked why did they attend this training? Feedback included:
How to deal with violence in the media.
What happens to the person when exposed to violence.
Learning to identify some behaviors as flags that sometimes reflects the story provided by parents
Helping children who drop out of programs when there is trauma or exposure to violence.
A foster parent wanted to be better prepared to help the children who come to her home.
Feelings evoked by trauma and how to be supportive with children and families.
National Black Child Development Institute (NBCDI) 2008 Annual Conference
Our Future: Children in a Global Village
October 25-28 Atlanta, Georgia
Four staff members of the Midwest Learning Center had their proposals accepted to present at the NBCDI conference.
This participation is part of our goal to share our learnings with the field regarding practice-based learning, and issues that improve the lives of children.
Training or consultation on these and other presentations is available through the Midwest Learning Center Contact Us
Equality in Early Education: Empowering Parents as Advocates Presenter: Crystal Elliott
This session examined the latest research in early care and education best practices to help professionals learn to empower parents to seek and support those practices in early childhood sites. By insisting upon best practices, we can insure that our children are prepared to compete in this changing global society. Crystal Elliott also presents on this topic for the Social Development Commission of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on November 14, 2008.
Parts of a Whole: Raising Multiracial Children In Today's Global Society Presenter/s: Celita Jamison and Cynthia Stringfellow
Multicultural, multiethnic, multiracial - what does it all mean? This session focused on the myriad issues impacting brown children. Major differences in these terms were explored along with a substantial discussion, as well as tools to navigate the complexity of the issues.
Family Support and Community Organizing: The Intersects Presenter: John S. Vizuete
The basic principles of family support and community building were merged in a partnership between Family Focus, Inc. and Community Organizing and Family Issues. Using feedback from parent leaders, community stakeholders, and service providers, the presenter shared real case scenarios and examined the impact of the project on promoting family-friendly policies.
