Fostering Family Stability Through Essential Supports
It’s hard for families to focus on health and healing when they are worried about basics like food, housing, transportation, or how to get care. When those everyday needs are met and families can reach the right support at the right time, stress can ease, crises are less likely to deepen, and children and caregivers have a stronger foundation for well-being. Through this work, the Foundation supports programs that help families find stability and stay connected to essentials like shelter, behavioral health care, legal support, food, transportation, and support for relatives raising children.
2024 grantee spotlights
- Children Trust Michigan
- Granite United Way
- LifeSpring Health Systems
- The Community Grocer
Children Trust Michigan
Advancing the HOPE framework
Over the past decade, growing awareness of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) has helped communities better understand how early experiences shape lifelong health and well-being. Through its statewide training efforts, Children Trust Michigan (CTM) observed that this awareness often led to a critical question from partners and practitioners: “What can I do?” While understanding risk is essential, leaders across Michigan recognized the need for a complementary, strengths-based approach that helps families and communities actively center strengths, relationships, and conditions that help children and families thrive.
The HOPE (Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences) framework provides that pathway forward. Developed by Dr. Robert Sege and the HOPE National Resource Center, this science-based approach highlights how positive childhood experiences — such as supportive relationships, safe environments, meaningful engagement, and opportunities for emotional growth — protect against adversity and promote lifelong health. By shifting the focus from risk to strengths, HOPE helps families and caregivers foster the relationships and environments that support healthy starts and ongoing youth development.
As Michigan’s only statewide organization focused solely on preventing child abuse and neglect, CTM has spent more than 40 years building a network of over 100 prevention partners across all 83 counties. Through technical assistance, training, and funding, CTM strengthens community-based systems that support family strengthening and stability and ensure children and caregivers have access to the resources and connections they need to thrive.
“We have 30 HOPE Facilitators across our network and 11 of them have become Champions. As HOPE Champions we can help people not just understand the [HOPE] building blocks, but how to use them in their work. It’s not adding one more thing to your job but helping you do your job through that HOPE lens — figuring out what is going right and what families are doing well, and amplifying that, and helping people actually have hope.”
–Jodi Mullett, Children Trust Michigan, Training and Education Manager
With support from the AmeriHealth Caritas Foundation in 2024, CTM partnered with the HOPE National Resource Center to expand the HOPE framework statewide. So far, CTM has trained 30 HOPE Facilitators to lead HOPE workshops, certified 13 HOPE Champions to guide implementation efforts, brought HOPE-informed practices into intake, referrals, and family engagement, and created statewide tools and resources to support learning and adoption. By aligning systems around positive experiences and protective factors, Children Trust Michigan is helping ensure that children start strong, families are supported, and communities are equipped to help youth and families thrive.
“Being a HOPE Champion is nothing short of amazing. I didn’t really know what to expect, but to be empowered. To give language to something that you were quick to do naturally was a game changer. When I learned how to put language to a skill that empowers not only people, not only an organization, but a community was a game changer for me. I am honored to learn additional skills and ways to serve people that need to have HOPE. It was absolutely amazing.”
–Shon Hart, Executive Director, Involved Dad (Flint, MI), HOPE Champion, Children Trust Michigan Prevention Partner
Granite United Way
Strengthening Family Resource Center leadership
Family Resource Centers (FRCs) are community-based hubs that support healthy starts, child and youth development, as well as family stability by strengthening the relationships and resources families need to thrive. Rooted in the Strengthening Families Protective Factors Framework, FRCs focus on building core strengths — such as parental resilience, social connections, and access to essential supports — that create the conditions for long-term well-being. Designed in partnership with local communities, these centers reflect the priorities and assets of the families they serve, ensuring culturally responsive, strengths-based support.
Nationwide, more than 3,000 FRCs operate in schools and neighborhoods, reaching millions of families with integrated services that strengthen family stability and promote positive outcomes for children. Evidence shows that FRCs not only improve family well-being and reduce involvement in child welfare systems but also generate cost savings returning an estimated $3.65 for every $1 invested.
Across New Hampshire, families need places they can turn to for trusted support, connection, and care. The Granite United Way, through its partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services, helps make that possible by strengthening the state’s Family Resource Center system with partnerships, funding and resources, so support is steady, skilled, and close to home when it’s needed most.
In 2024, Foundation funding helped the Granite United Way launch the Strong Families, Thriving Children Initiative to build on that trusted foundation and expand prevention-focused services. This investment focused on strengthening an existing, trusted system by enhancing infrastructure, expanding programming, and ensuring continuity of services.
“The funding also helped strengthen the Family Resource Center system by supporting infrastructure, evaluation, and evidence-based practice. Some centers moved closer to earning the Family Resource Center of Quality designation, New Hampshire’s benchmark for excellence in family support, while others kept building on quality work already underway. That kind of progress strengthens the whole network.”
So far, the initiative has helped 10 FRCs stabilize and expand services, trained 80 family support professionals across 16 FRCs in Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI), and reached 3,400 families and 4,370 children while making 3,359 referrals to connect families with additional resources. That training is helping equip the people who show up for families every day with trauma-informed skills they can carry forward over time.
Funding also supported parent education, home visiting, support for kinship caregivers, developmental screenings, and peer recovery services. At the same time, Granite United Way advanced Family Resource Center of Quality (FRC-Q) standards, helping ensure consistent, high-quality services across the system.
By investing in a coordinated, statewide system of care, Granite United Way is demonstrating how strengthening existing community infrastructure can expand access, reinforce frontline capacity, and support families earlier, helping children start strong, youth to grow and succeed, and families to remain stable and supported across New Hampshire.
LifeSpring Health Systems
Supporting the launch of a community’s first behavioral health urgent care clinic
When someone is experiencing a behavioral health crisis, fast access to the appropriate level of care is critical to what happens next. A grant from the Foundation helped LifeSpring Health Systems launch Jeffersonville’s first behavioral health urgent care clinic, expanding the continuum of care by creating a new place to turn before a crisis escalates or treatment is delayed.
By August 2025, the clinic was fully operational with a dedicated nurse practitioner, referral pathways, and billing capacity to help sustain the services. In its first five months, it served 176 patients, including many youth and young adults, and every patient received a referral for follow-up care. Just as important, the model helped prevent escalation by supporting youth and young adults with high trauma exposure and helped divert patients from the emergency department and jail, avoid emergency detention orders, and quickly connecting people with treatment and medication support.
"The success of a behavioral health urgent care is reflected in its ability to provide timely, accessible, and person-centered care- ensuring that no one has to face a mental health crisis alone or wait for help.”
—Beth Keeney, CEO, LifeSpring Health Systems
This work demonstrates how access to behavioral health can interrupt the cycle of crisis and reduce exposure to additional trauma for children, caregivers, families, and communities. Local partners, including community organizations and the local police department, have been integral in referring patients to this new support. The behavioral health urgent care clinic created a new front door to care for people who might otherwise seek care through emergency rooms, detention, or delayed treatment which are not best positioned to support their needs. By responding quickly and connecting patients to ongoing support, the model helps stabilize families in moments of acute stress and strengthens the systems they rely on to heal.
The Community Grocer
Where food access meets opportunity: A new model for health and stability
The Community Grocer is reimagining food access as a community-driven pathway to health, connection, and economic opportunity. In West Philadelphia’s Cobbs Creek neighborhood, where more than half of residents experience food insecurity and many families face barriers to healthy eating, The Community Grocer is building a new model that connects neighbors to affordable, nutritious food in ways that reflect daily realities and community priorities.
In 2025, Foundation funding helped The Community Grocer move closer to opening its first brick-and-mortar location while continuing to serve families through immediate food access programs such as weekly food distributions and hot meals. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) does not allow Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) benefits to be used for prepared foods. The Community Grocer addresses this gap by offering SNAP/WIC-eligible meal kits that can be exchanged for fresh, ready-to-eat meals prepared next door by an off-premise partner and community-run kitchen. The kitchen is staffed by externs from The Community Grocer’s workforce development program at no additional cost to neighbors. This gives families who may not have the time, space, or equipment to cook access to healthy meals.
The Community Grocer also offers a registered culinary apprenticeship for neighbors and after-school programming focused on nutrition, art, and social-emotional learning. By linking food access with workforce development and youth engagement, the model strengthens both family well-being and local economic stability.
In 2025, The Community Grocer provided groceries and hot meals to thousands of neighbors, expanding weekly food distributions from approximately 200 to 400 families as community need increased. During periods of instability, including SNAP policy disruptions, the organization mobilized to prepare and distribute hundreds of additional hot meals weekly.
At its core, The Community Grocer model is designed to do more than provide food: it creates a welcoming, multi-generational hub where families can access essential supports, build relationships, and connect to resources that promote long-term health and stability. Guided by a resident-led advisory committee, the organization ensures that community voices shape every aspect of its work, from programming to store design.
As The Community Grocer prepares to open its inaugural location this year, it is laying the foundation for a scalable, community-centered approach that strengthens families, supports youth, and ensures children and caregivers have the resources they need to thrive.
2025 grantees
In 2025, the Foundation supported organizations that helped families meet essential needs and build greater stability. Together, these grant partners help families meet immediate needs, build on family strengths, and create pathways to long-term well-being through access to food, housing, health care, legal support, financial stability, and kinship care.
- Kinship care and family connection
- Housing stability and supportive services
- Economic mobility and family opportunity
- Access to essential needs and care
Kinship care and family connection
Helping and Lending Outreach Support (HALOS), The Villages of Indiana, and the Urban League of Central Carolinas help children stay connected to family and community by strengthening family connection through kinship navigation, legal support, caregiver resources, and reunification service.
Housing stability and supportive services
Lutheran Settlement House, New Orleans Women & Children’s Shelter, and Sojourner House MOMS support housing stability through shelter, supportive housing, case management, mental health care, parenting supports, and access to basic resources as families move toward long-term stability.
Economic mobility and family opportunity
StepUp Ministry gives families a stronger foundation by supporting adults in growing financial skills, setting goals, and family relationships, while giving children opportunities to build school readiness, literacy, and confidence through advocacy and tutoring.
Access to essential needs and care
The Appalachian Children Coalition and Feeding America keep families connected to care and essentials by bringing school-based health services closer to home and getting food support to communities affected by SNAP disruptions.