FMF Seminar - The 2Gen Approach

As briefly mentioned in our piece on the types of poverty, we often see families cycle through poverty and homelessness generationally. To break these cycles, FMF strives to provide support and resources to the entire family. By employing a two-generation model (2Gen), we hope to reinforce and build on the strengths of both guardians and children and provide access to resources and support to improve outcomes for the entire family. This model looks different for each of our guest families. While we provide age-appropriate skills and informational programming to all, we also work 1-on-1 with each family member to offer relevant and vital referrals, support, and guidance. This comprehensive and collaborative approach to providing tailored support fosters stability and resilience. 

For Children

We strive to have all our kiddos undergo age-appropriate screenings soon after entry into our program. This enables us to create custom interventions for specialized services to ensure that children are at the developmental and educational level of their peers not experiencing homelessness. We work closely with community partners to offer referrals to services like occupational, behavioral, and speech therapy. We also provide educational support, centered around our volunteer-led Study Buddies program, where students can get homework assistance, tutoring, and additional reading and literacy enrichment. In addition, our teen guests can participate in our Teen Fellowship program, consisting of college and workforce readiness programming – college tours, leadership development, and career exploration.

For Adults

We also offer a range of programming and resources for our adult guests. In addition to creating goals for housing and self-sufficiency with their case managers, we encourage guests to attend offered workshops on financial literacy, parent/child attachment and development, workforce readiness, tenant/landlord rights & relations, art therapy, community support, and more.

Importantly, these offerings and referrals are at no cost to our guests and are often provided by incredible volunteers from the community. We know that investing in the whole family helps build a stronger and more resilient foundation for success – and works to build skills and resource networks for families to move towards thriving.