In Brooklyn Park, MD, parents are co-creators, not passive recipients, in shaping family and neighborhood action plans. Thanks to the Partnership for Children, Youth & Families, housing insecure families can work with a Family Coach to achieve their goals, access community resources, and build stability and well-being for every member of their household. Group activities also encourage family bonding and the development of strong peer networks.

When parents succeed in college, their children are more likely to follow—breaking the cycle of poverty and creating opportunity that lasts for generations. Scholar House empowers single parents to pursue their education by removing the two biggest obstacles to post-secondary education: affordable housing and quality childcare. Residents also participate in coaching, counseling, and peer learning to stay on track.

Client voice and whole-family care is at the heart of Community of Hope’s model, which integrates medical care, birthing and emotional wellness services to support healthy pregnancies and eliminate health inequities, particularly for families of color. Families receive personalized support from home visitors, care coordinators, and therapists, and participate in evidence-based group programs like CenteringPregnancy®, CenteringParenting® and Parent Cafés that build community connections and peer support.

From pregnancy through postpartum, the Mothers Rising Home Visitation team partners with families to co-create birthing and care plans centered on their goals and needs. Through hyper-local home visiting and perinatal services, families receive culturally tailored, respectful support that addresses racial disparities in birth outcomes for Black women. Many clients are inspired to join Mamatoto’s career pathways programs, becoming perinatal community health workers, doulas, or lactation specialists in their communities.

In the South Bronx, a collaboration of community partners unites to empower immigrant families to thrive through coaching, social connection, and coordinated, cross-agency supports. This Whole Family Approach recognizes the value of each person within a family as “mattering.” Family Workers, trained in family-centered coaching, build rapport and trust with children and adults alike, which encourages participants to take steps they may not have otherwise.

The Parent Child Centers in Rutland and Bennington counties created Families at the Center to help underserved, rural families navigate fragmented services and transportation barriers. By connecting families monthly with community navigators, peer networks, and local resources—from WIC to mental health and education supports—the program breaks down barriers, builds trust, and expands social connections. Families get the help they need and are motivated to become more involved in their communities.

University Hospitals brought the national, evidence-based HealthySteps program to Northeast Ohio to help parents and their babies get off to a strong start in life. At pediatric checkups at the UH Rainbow Ahuja Center for Women & Children, babies are seen by child developmental specialists in addition to their pediatrician. The HealthySteps team works with families to identify challenges early and prevent others from happening, offering guidance, screenings, resources, and referrals to community services.

Ascend at the Aspen Institute is a catalyst and convener for diverse leaders working across systems and sectors to build intergenerational family prosperity and well-being by intentionally focusing on children and the adults in their lives together. Ascend believes in the power of co-creation. Its community of leaders is working to build political will that transforms hearts, minds, policies and practices.

CFUF and community partners created the Baltimore 2Gen Ecosystem to help families break the cycle of poverty through coordinated referrals, case management and family empowerment. CFUF also embedded a 2Gen approach across all programs—offering EMPath (Economic Mobility Pathways) coaching, strengthened fatherhood services, and new legacy wealth-building opportunities like home ownership assistance.

Tri-C piloted a program for parents lacking a high school diploma who also have a teen at risk of not graduating. The learnings from this 2Gen model led Tri-C to embed a whole-family approach across all its adult education programs to boost academic success for student parents.

Educational Alliance implemented the Family Resource Center (FRC) at the Manny Cantor Center in Lower Manhattan, creating a hub of holistic family services. This ‘single stop’ model is available to parents with children in its high-quality early childhood programs and to community members alike. FRC social workers help families with a range of services, including mental health, legal, housing, employment, parenting, and language classes.

Enterprise piloted a whole-family approach with a NYC affordable housing provider and the Goddard Riverside Community Center to improve housing stability, economic mobility, and well-being for extremely low-income families. Through coordinated services, referrals, and EMPath’s Mobility Mentoring Coaching, participants reduced rental arrears, increased household income, and connected their children to after-school enrichment programs.

Friends of the Future collaborated with college students and community partners to design the Thrive Center, a welcoming place for student-parents at Hawai‘i Community College’s Kō Education Center (KōEC). While plans for a full-scale family career and education center in this remote area of North Hawai’i could not be fully realized after the pandemic, KōEC continues to offer access to quality educational opportunities for the community.

Literacy Partners enhanced its English for Parents classes to build parent knowledge of child development and improve health access for the whole family. Classes improve functional English language skills and parent-child bonding, and model family reading habits. Literacy Partners’ 2Gen approach also connects immigrant families with additional social services to help the whole family thrive.

Nurse-Family Partnership (NFP) is a national model that improves pregnancy, child health and family economic outcomes. MetroHealth is tackling Cuyahoga County’s high rate of maternal and infant mortality by pairing patients with registered NFP nurses who provide ongoing home visits during pregnancy and continue until the child’s second birthday. Nurses offer personalized guidance on health, child development and parenting, helping families achieve goals and build strong foundations for their children’s future.

Family Partners—a collaboration among Family Connections, OhioGuidestone, and Cleveland Central Promise Neighborhood—expanded services and supports to parents of preschoolers enrolled in Family Connections’ SPARK kindergarten readiness program. By building trusting relationships and a supportive peer community, parents not only became powerful learning partners in their child’s education but also took their own steps towards economic stability and well-being.

The Child Center piloted Cash+Community Works, a neighborhood-based initiative helping under-resourced families make positive changes in their lives and community. Participating families engaged in monthly peer network meetings, received unrestricted cash support, and designed a micro-grant program to support small businesses and community projects. Participants reported improved economic security and emotional well-being.

The Centers hired a 2Gen Director to oversee integration of early childhood, workforce development, and health care services. By dismantling program silos and creating a ‘no wrong door’ system of intake and family service integration, families receive support no matter where they enter the agency’s continuum of care.

Towards Employment strengthened its Career Pathways model by training coaches to support the whole family, not just the jobseeker. Using a whole-family intake process to assess household needs, coaches help remove barriers to family stability and connect participants and their children to parenting, literacy, and community resources.

The United Hospital Fund created the Partnerships for Early Childhood Development Collaborative. Over three years, eight NYC hospital systems worked to strengthen social needs screening and build referral partnerships with community organizations to address social and environmental factors impacting healthy child development. Clinical-community partnerships remain a core focus of United Hospital Fund’s mission.