Programs, Services & Support : Parents

• Join the Fresno Chapter of PARENT VOICES today!
  Children's Services Network sponsors the local Parent Voices group, which is parent-led and focuses on the immediate needs of parents and families. These parents collaboratively may address child care, housing, transportation, health insurance, adult literacy, parenting skills, and other selected topics. Within the group is the opportunity to develop leadership, advocacy, and community organizing skills.
  
  
• Building Parent Leadership
  Parents working together to solve the challenges of raising children discover new tools that expand the parental leadership abilities. The Parent Voices group supports the parents' needs and works to provide greater resources for parents. Parents are also given the knowledge to work for social change through existing institutions – such as school boards, civic organizations, and legislatures.
  
  

Call Lou Hernandez at (559) 456-1100 for more information.

Fresno parents attend Stand for Children Day in Sacramento:
On May 3, 2006, 85 people from Fresno County attended Stand For Children Day in Sacramento to voice their concerns to the governor and legislators about the need to update the State Median Income (SMI), an income guideline used to determine child care eligibility. Updating the SMI would allow more families to receive child care assistance.

Over 600 parents from all over California attended the event. Parents visited with representatives from Assemblyman Juan Arambula, Assemblywoman Nichole Parra, Senator Dean Florez, and Senator Charles Poochigian. It was a day to Celebrate Our Children!

What came out of this Rally?
Policy decision makers met and have agreed that the SMI must be updated. Discussions are underway to make changes that will benefit families needing child care subsidy.

What’s next?
Get involved with Parent Voices. Attend parent meetings to plan local actions by working with other parents to build strong families and healthy communities.

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Fighting to keep their child care
Tammy La Framboise was doing everything right. The single mother of Sydney (five) and Ronnie (seven) got off welfare, got a B.A., and last August found a job as an environmental specialist for the Federal Bureau of Reclamation. Then she was told that her new salary was $32 a month too high, so she would lose the child care subsidy that paid for Sydney’s family child care. “It’s amazing how far back that would set me,” says LaFramboise. “I’d be in the red about $600 a month.” So, she says, “I asked them where they got the figures.” She learned that families are eligible for child care subsidies if they make up to 75% of the state median income (SMI). But she also learned that for five years the legislature has been passing budget bills “freezing” the SMI, while the cost of living keeps increasing. If the SMI had been updated, LaFramboise would still be eligible for subsidized child care. So she filed an appeal.

Taking action
She also attended a Sacramento meeting of Parent Voices, a group which is campaigning for the state to update the SMI. “I felt like I really need to speak up,” she says, “not only for my case, but for other women in the same situation.” She told her story at a hearing at the state Capitol March 22, and is looking forward to participating in Parent Voices, “when they get a Yolo County chapter going.”

Costly raise
Melanie Welch has been a Parent Voices activist for several years, attending the annual Stand for Children and speaking at the Capitol. The SMI campaign touches her very personally. “My boss wanted to give me a $1.25 raise,” she says, “but I had to decline,” to stay eligible for after-school care for six-year-old Faith. With the raise but no child care subsidy, Welch says, “I would have been more in the hole.”

Really powerful
With Parent Voices, Welch recently visited Assembly member Mark Leno (D, SF) to talk about the SMI. Juggling kids, job, and school (she hopes to get her B.A. this year), Welch makes Parent Voices a priority. She remembers going to her first meeting and finding it “just really powerful” to be with “a lot of women in our situation: hardworking single parents.”