Success By 6, Family Fundamentals

United Way of Central Florida Success By 6 Initiatives

Family Fundamentals is a collaboration of organizations committed to strengthening families and our community by increasing access and awareness to resources and services. This Success By 6 parent resource center is a warm, welcoming place where parents and other family members come to access information, support services, and the tools they need to be the best parents they can be. Forty-two agencies offer services on site to provide a one-stop opportunity for parents. Parents come for one service or class and return for others. The center is located at 1021 Lakeland Hills Blvd. in Lakeland, above the Lakeland Volunteers in Medicine.

Family Fundamentals offers many ideas and activities to promote brain development and family relationships children need to enter school ready to succeed. Recurring activities for parents and children include groups that encourage appropriate parent/child interaction, daily School Readiness activities in the model classroom, and Creative Movement. Some of the current classes are childbirth preparation, computer classes, support groups and parenting classes. Family Fundamentals also has a parent resource room, children’s library, playroom, and adult classrooms/meeting rooms. Partners provide evaluations, counseling, casework and many other services. Family Fundamentals is in its 11th year and on track to receive over 29,000 visitors this year.

Family Fundamentals’ premier event, the annual Back to School Blast, was held in August at the Lakeland Center. 5,335 family members attended this free event, with 3438 children grades PreK–5th receiving a backpack and school supplies. 173 community volunteers assisted at the event and 392 vendor/provider volunteers from various organizations facilitated activities and distributed parent information. 31 Medical personnel provided immunizations to 132 children and performed 322 health screenings. Dental, body mass index, vision, hearing, lead and speech screenings were also completed. Parents signed themselves and their children up for additional services including Florida KidCare insurance, tutoring and library cards. Our next Blast is scheduled for August 4, 2012!

Parent Resource Guide - The United Way of Central Florida’s Success By 6 produces the Parent Resource Guide in March, July and November, reaching over 200,000 homes with each 16 page edition as an insert in the Time Out Section of The Ledger. The Resource Guide provides a comprehensive list of services in the area and contains informative, timely articles to assist parents and families in linking with services and community agencies. An additional 15,000 copies are also distributed to parents by partners in our community. As of July 31, 2011, Highlands Today also began distributing a Highlands County edition of the Parent Resource Guide. This edition reaches over 50,000 Highlands Today readers and an additional 5,000 overruns are distributed. The Ledger and Highlands Today do not charge for the printing of the inserts. Success By 6 is given space based on advertisements sold.


Born Learning - Everyday life is a learning experience for children! Born Learning is a public engagement campaign that helps parents, grandparents and caregivers explore ways to turn everyday moments into fun learning opportunities. Through national public service advertising, parent materials and community mobilization activities, Born Learning provides action steps that are fun, easy – and can be taken in everyday moments – to prepare young children for school. Born Learning information has been placed in newsletters, in Publix Super Markets, websites, in the Lakeland Magazine, at the movies, on billboards, and in The Ledger and Highlands Today. Partners such as Heartland for Children provide funding for materials that home-visitors like Healthy Families then use with parents. Seven years later, we have seen over 1.5 million pieces of Born Learning material being shared with parents! Visit bornlearning.org for more information and parenting tips.

Parent Lending Libraries - Through the generosity of grants and sponsorships, libraries are being placed at childcare centers to allow parents to conveniently borrow books to read with their child every day. This encourages the early literacy skills that prepare children to enter school ready to succeed. The first Parent Lending Library was placed in 2004. There are now 120 Parent Lending Libraries in Polk and Hardee counties. Past major sponsors have included Verizon Reads, Early Learning Coalition of Polk County, Heartland for Children, Polk County CDBG, and Winter Haven CDBG. Parents borrowed over 30,000 books last year and over 3,590 kids had access each month!

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library provides children with a free new book every month for their first five years. Dolly Parton started Imagination Library in 1995, to fight illiteracy in her eastern Tennessee community. Research shows that disadvantaged children come to school years behind their peers in pre-reading skills, and rarely catch up — and that the children still struggling to read in 3rd grade are the ones who eventually drop out. Evaluations indicate that Imagination Library is getting kids more interested in reading – and getting their parents more comfortable reading to their children. Children are mailed an age appropriate book directly to their homes to build their own private library. Each child receives one book per month up to their fifth birthday. 8 out of 10 middle-income children in Polk County enter Kindergarten ready to read. Only 2 out of 10 low-income children are ready. For that reason low-income sites are targeted when enrolling children.

Local sponsors currently include the George W. Jenkins Fund within the Community Foundation of Greater Lakeland, Mosaic, Bank of America, the Lakeland Chamber of Commerce, Friends of the Bartow Library, Nat and Jane West, Bartow Rotary and Florida’s Natural Growers Foundation. Polk County areas currently in the program are Bartow, Fort Meade, Lake Wales, Winter Haven and Lakeland. 12,133 books were mailed to children in 2011!

Master Teachers - Four master teachers provide supervised internships in childcare centers and family childcare homes. Pre/post testing on the Florida State Assessment (99 quality indicators) and Reddy On-Task Measurement in Time demonstrated that scores in 2011 improved from 6-76% at 32 childcare sites with an average improvement of 33%. 96% of the centers improved by 15% or more. 494 children benefited from this increase in quality. 75 trained teachers will continue to provide more appropriate care for years to come. The Imagination Library, Parent Lending Libraries, Born Learning materials, Parent Resource Guides and parent education nights are all also coordinated within each Master Teacher Initiative site. Vocabulary scores for children have improved an average of 2.6 months for every one month of exposure to a newly trained teacher!