Family Support Center

The Rise Family Support Center is a new safe and welcoming space where families can come together and access resources as well as strategize to push for system-level change. The center supports and partners with families at every stage of life, bringing them together in community to make plans, receive support, and fix things together using principles of community organizing. 

All the programs at the center share a common grounding in the SHARP Framework, working with families to facilitate and support them in claiming power and building common understanding. 

The State of Maryland Strategic Educational Plan mandates family support centers to prepare children to enter schools through early childhood, prenatal, and kindergarten programs. Children who go to preschool do better in school, and the center partners with families so that their children are ready to learn. Getting the whole family ready for the child’s education is a primary goal.

The center is a welcoming hub housing multiple programs under one roof, including B’More For Healthy Babies and Family Connections Baltimore. Families can gather to overcome systemic obstacles as they get their day-to-day needs met. Staff work with parents and caregivers to assess their needs and refer them for services throughout the community. The center puts a strong emphasis on bringing male caregivers into the work of organizing, as their importance to the health and success of children is often not as well-recognized as the work of women caregivers. 

There is food, space to connect and learn, places for rest and respite care, and spaces to identify common social barriers to overcome together. The center is both embedded in the community it serves and available to people from all across Baltimore. It enables staff to be more responsive to the community’s power.

The center provides families with the tools they need to be engaged and advocate for their children when they get to school. Schools are ready to welcome families from the center, and families are ready to enter the school system successfully when the time comes. For social work practitioners, the center moves the dynamic from a transactional social work approach to a transformational one.

Updates

• Construction began: November 2023
• Anticipated opening: May 2024
• Community-led naming results: “Rise” as the core vision of the new center
• A new community partner: Maryland CASH, will offer financial well-being support to participants