General

Every family will experience stress at some time that tests its ability to stay together, care for its members in healthy ways, and continue to function as a family unit.

We are a coalition joining together to serve our valley by mobilizing resources to create an environment that enriches, equips and supports healthy relationships and fosters responsible fatherhood.

Healthy Families Yakima began with a dedicated group of people working in many settings—from nonprofit to government agencies and businesses and faith-based groups, all who saw a need to unite to become efficient and effective in the way they served families. A natural outcome was to augment services being provided, and in 2002 the group formalized its desire to provide healthy relationship education throughout Yakima County, and plans began to be formulated for today’s Healthy Families Yakima.

Our vision is that the Yakima Valley will be recognized as an area that values marriage and fatherhood; and people in all walks of life will be empowered to foster healthy relationships, strengthen their families, and to surround our children with adults who demonstrate healthy relational skills in all settings.

Vision/Mission Statement

Vision: Our vision is that the Yakima Valley be recognized as a community that values marriage and works together to foster and support an environment for healthy relationships for married couples, family life and children; that by promoting families that are healthy and happy we will one day see a community of people who are healthy and happy.

Mission: We are working to saturate Yakima Valley with education and resources to promote healthy relationships and marriages and to foster responsible fatherhood.

Strategic Direction: We will invest in comprehensive, community-level intervention strategies that promote and maintain healthy marriages and responsible fatherhood, and will support these intervention strategies with technical assistance, performance measurement and community impact assessments.

We will bring together members of the faith-based community with social service agencies, nonprofit organizations, public schools, professional organizations, healthcare providers and leaders of local government. This multi-sector partnership of faith-based and secular entities will provide a comprehensive menu of services to organizations and individuals throughout Yakima County.

Activities:

Research and Data Collection

Community will be surveyed about attitudes and behaviors as it relates to marriage and to identify local marriage, family, and relationship services. Churches will be asked to survey their congregations to identify family needs and future volunteer base. Town meetings will be held to learn of the needs and ideas from the general population. The coalition will also assemble secondary research of community child support activities using state, county, and census data for accurate baselines for paternity establishment, child support and other family formation trends.

Coalition Building / Development

The Coalition will be organized with a structure that is comprised of three key components:

Steering Committee: There are checks and balances as the Steering Committee is the decision making body and exists to ensure that the project is aligned with vision and mission and core values.

Coalition Partners: Coalition membership reflects the community at large and is charged with ensuring the activities and services delivered meet the needs of individuals and families.

Service Providers: Service Providers will be touching families and individuals in a variety of planned and selected activities.

The projects will provide opportunity for the mobilization of faith-based and social service organizations to focus services on prevention instead of intervention.

Leadership Education and Training

Leadership from the faith-based community, government, non-profit, education, military, legal, health, and tribal entities will receive training with special emphasis on the benefits of healthy marriages and responsible parenting.

Media / Communication

Educating the community regarding the benefits of marriage and responsible fatherhood, paternity establishment, and the importance of child support will require a multi-media campaign to influence the diverse communities in the Yakima Valley.

Community Enrichment Events

Opportunities will be provided to develop and expand access to a variety of parenting and relationship classes, dispute resolution services and enhance community-wide events celebrating and honoring families in Yakima Valley.

Leadership

Administrative Team

Kathy Thomas, Program Manager, South Central Workforce Council
Sylvia Flores, District Manager, DSHS Division of Child Support
Madelyn Carlson, NCAC Director of Planning & Development, Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic
Cindy Maib-Robinson, Director of Employment and Training, People for People
Don Oswalt, Community Services Office Administrator, DSHS
Linda Kraft, Organization Development Consultant, Kraft Consulting

Coalition Partners

Coalition Partners are comprised of over 50 people representing education (K-12 and community college), social services, community based organizations, local and state government, and faith-based organizations. To view the list

Government Initiative

The Administration for Children and Families within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Washington State’s Division of Child Support and the City of Yakima has launched a new project called Healthy Families Yakima. This multi-site, multi-year, rigorous test of marriage skills programs, the project is motivated by research that indicates that married adults and children raised by their married parents do better on a host of outcomes. Low-income couples face greater challenges to building and maintaining healthy marriages, however, and their families are consequently less likely to receive the benefits of healthy marriages. While an extensive body of research exists on strengthening marriages, this research consists primarily of small-scale studies on a limited range of demographic groups.

Supporting Healthy Marriage is part of a larger HHS research agenda to study the effectiveness of efforts to sustain healthy marriages. Other research projects include the Building Strong Families evaluation targeted to low-income unwed couples beginning around the time of their child’s birth, and the Community Healthy Marriage Initiative Evaluation, which is evaluating community saturation approaches for strengthening healthy marriage.

For more information, download the full Government Initiative information [ Word 103 KB]

Desired Objectives

• Develop a strong community-wide focus on children and families and create a culture that encourages healthy marriages.
• Promote healthy marriages and healthy outcomes for couples, parents and children in low-income communities.
• Reduce domestic and family violence through education and services.
• Create a public media campaign to encourage financial support by non-custodial parents, healthy marriage, and responsible fatherhood and motherhood.
• Connect fathers and mothers with their families.
• Enhance efforts to establish paternity, enforce child support-orders and locate non-custodial parents.

Anticipated Outcomes:

• Increase the rate of marital success.
• Increase the marital and family health.
• Increase the percentage of couples receiving pre-marital education.
• Increase the percentage of children born to a married mother and father.
• Reduce the percentage and number of teenage pregnancies.
• Reduce the percentage of children born as a result of extramarital affairs.
• Decrease the rate of teenage sexual activity and teen birth rates.
• Decrease both number of people affected by domestic violence as well as domestic violence occurrences.
• Reduce welfare caseloads due to increase in child support collections.
• Increase paternity establishment and financial support by non-custodial parents.
• Improve compliance with child support orders and reduce the cost of child support.