South Bay Center for Counseling

Family Support/School Readiness Center
The purpose of this grant is to promote the idea of school readiness by creating centers and programs that offer an array of services, including early care and education, health and social services, parenting education and support. Programs will be responsive to local needs and will contain elements to improve schools' readiness for children. The South Bay located in SPA 8 is a densely populated, resource deficient urban area of Los Angeles County, is the target community for the Family Support School Readiness Program (FSSRP).  FSSRP activities will focus on children and families living in neighborhoods surrounding 6 elementary schools. While the majority of residents are Latino (54%), the Asian Pacific population (15%) is on the rise; White residents have consistently made up 20% and African Americans account for 11% of the population.  Because language is crucial to success in school, the fact that many families are non-English speaking or limited in English proficiency is of concern. Of the 5,566 students enrolled in the target elementary schools, an average of 56% are not yet proficient in English.  While over half of the residents in the targeted areas are employed, one-quarter (24%) of households have annual incomes less than $15,000 and 30% earn less than $35,000 a year.  The primary sites for this program are the six elementary schools (186th street, Dominquez, Fries, Roosevelt and Edison). All School Readiness grants are 48 months in length across 5 fiscal years. Major program activities include: a culturally and linguistically appropriate early childhood development curriculum will be utilized to train family child care providers, a Mobile Resource Van will be available to provide resources and materials to family child care providers in the targeted communities, a Resource Lending Libraries will be on-site at the Healthy Start sites for providers to access needed materials, curriculum, and toys/books, parent education classes and parent support networks will be at the Healthy Start sites for families with children aged 0-5 in the surrounding communities, parents of children aged 0-5 in the targeted communities will have access to family support services through the coordinators at the Healthy Start sites,  parents of children aged 0-5 in the targeted communities will have access to health and social  services through the coordinators at the Healthy Start sites.