EmPoWERing Families
Positive and supportive family relationships play a key role in building protective factors to encourage healthy behaviors among youth. EmPoWER Somerset offers a variety of evidence-based programs and resources that teach important life skills, strengthen family bonds, and give families an opportunity to take time out of their busy routines and have fun together!
Guiding Good Choices
Guiding Good Choices (GGC)/Encaminandolos Hacia Buenas Decisiones is a substance use prevention program, offered in both English and Spanish, that provides parents of children in grades 4 through 8 (9 to 14 years old) with the knowledge and skills needed to guide their children through early adolescence. It seeks to strengthen and clarify family expectations for behavior, enhance conditions that promote bonding within the family, and teach skills that allow children to resist drug use successfully. GGC is a research based program that is delivered over six hourly sessions. It shows that consistent, positive parental involvement is important to helping children resist substance use and other antisocial behaviors.
For more information on this program, please contact Cheryl Rinaldi.
Parents As Champions
Earn up to a $1,000 grant for your school by holding a PAC workshop!
The Parents as Champions for Healthy Schools Project (PAC) provides family leadership development workshops to engage families in advocacy for healthier school environments. Research shows that healthy students do better in school, and that parents play a critical role in their children’s health and learning.
This hands-on, interactive workshop provides parents with the knowledge, skills, and confidence they need to partner with schools around health. In the workshop, parent teams learn about school health, develop advocacy skills, determine an area of need in their school, and create an action plan to address that need in partnership with their school. Parent teams that complete the workshop may apply for a small grant in collaboration with their school to implement their action plans.
To learn more about holding a PAC workshop for your school contact Kristen Schiro. Please visit the Statewide Parent Advocacy Network website for more information about PAC.
Pioneer Family Success Center
EmPoWER established the Pioneer Family Success Center (FSC) as part of the organization on March 1, 2012. The purpose of the FSC is to enrich the lives of children and adults by making families and neighborhoods stronger and to provide families with the tools to identify and build on their strengths in order to reach their goals. We offer the community a gathering place, connect families to helpful resources in Somerset County, and bring families together through free events, programs, and local activities.
For more information about how the Pioneer Family Success Center empowers families please visit their website.
Family Unity Night
Family Unity Night (F.U.N.), using the Strengthening Families Program curriculum, helps build positive communication and connections between parents and children through family skill training sessions. Each two hour session provides one hour for parents and youth to learn and practice new behaviors separately, followed by one hour of working together so that appropriate responses to various behaviors become easier to incorporate into family interpersonal relations. The program is delivered over seven two-hour sessions.