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Feeling isolated or anxious? We can help.

If you or someone you know is feeling isolated, anxious or depressed – our licensed mental health therapists are here to help during COVID-19.

Contact our Central Intake lines.

While COVID-19  has changed our world, The Family Partnership’s mental health services are still here for children, adults, couples and families.

Our licensed therapists are available for confidential telemedicine for anyone seeking help and support. If you are feeling isolated, you do not have to be alone.

To connect with one of our therapists call our Central Intake Lines:
English/ Español: 612-728-2061
Hmoob: 763-569-2625

To learn more about our Mental Health services watch this short video.

The Family Partnership continues to support individuals and families in need of our services and resources by carefully following safety protocols during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

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List updated on 3/30/2020

Learn more about how The Family Partnership is continuing to serve families during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.

Serving Families During COVID-19 

The Family Partnership continues to support families with most of our programs remaining open during the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. Our remote workers are using confidential technology tools to support those in need of our services.

Contact us through our Central Intake Line:
English/Español: 612-728-2061
9am – 7 pm M-F, with after-hours messages returned the next business day.
Email:  info@thefamilypartnership.org

Programs assisting clients virtually include:

Preschools and Child Care

The Family Partnership re-opened our Children’s First Early Learning Center (as of May 20) and our Four Directions Family Center (as of May 26) with adherence to strict safety protocols. Our preschool staff are using a phased approach as they invite enrolled families to return their children to The Family Partnership centers.

A detailed COVID-19 Safe and Healthy Workplace Plan for The Family Partnership has been implemented to provide maximum safety for children and staff. The Family Partnership’s plan is science-based and follows the guidelines published by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Minnesota Department of Health (MDH), Minnesota Department of Human Services, and federal OSHA standards related to COVID-19 and includes, in part:

Unified Therapy Services

Our Unified Therapy staff will resume services to children at our preschools following all safety precautions. Our therapists are continuing working with children and families virtually until we resume services for other children at our facilities, or in facilities operated by community partners (such as PICA Head Start).

We have posted COVID-19 resources suggested by our program staff.

We are sensitive to the disruption our change in services means to those who need us the most. Our dedicated staff is committed to fulfilling The Family Partnership’s mission to building strong families, vital communities, and better futures for children.

Updated 5/26/20

Stay healthy and safe! 

For more information on COVID-19 visit the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) website or the Minnesota Department of Health (MDH) website.

The Manhattan Toy Company (MTC) selected The Family Partnership’s North Minneapolis preschool as the recipient of the company’s first-ever “Happy Start” grant. The Minneapolis Company is donating 200 of its educational, high-end wooden and stuffed toys, and a check for $100,000, to boost the preschool children’s learning development.

“We want all kids to have a happy start in life, regardless of if they can afford our toys,” says Nora O’Leary, CEO of MTC.

We chose The Family Partnership’s Children’s First Early Learning Center for our first grant because they are doing great things right in our own community.

Nora O’Leary, CEO of MTC

O’Leary also cited TFP’s record with kids:  94% of the children attending TFP’s multicultural therapeutic preschools graduate “kindergarten-ready” vs. only 30% of all Minnesota children living in poverty.

More than toys – The $100,000 grant will support scholarships, transportation and family events, important services to the preschool’s families, 98 percent of whom live 200 percent below the federal poverty level.

Amanda Molstad, MTC, gives a toy to a preschooler during the 2019 Fall Festival

“The grant helps to provide financial stability so we can get kids to school and families can attend our hosted events and do activities together,” says Cassaundra Davis, Director of Children’s First Early Learning Center.  “Our teachers and kids were thrilled to unpack the toys and begin playing with them!  We plan to integrate them into our lesson plans.”

In addition, each preschooler will be able to select a toy to keep as their own!

For gift ideas from MTC for your family, see the KARE-11 story Toys that teach.

Openings available for families seeking reliable, quality care for children ages six weeks to 15 months! The new infant room recently opened at our North Minneapolis preschool.

”As soon as our current families heard about the room, they signed up their infant, so we have already booked three of our nine infant spots,” reports Cassaundra Davis, The Family Partnership Director – Children’s First Early Learning Center. “We have openings available for new families searching for reliable, quality care.”

First time The Family Partnership is helping infants

The infant room provides earlier intervention for The Family Partnership’s two generation (2Gen) approach to building strong families.

“We know there is massive developmental time in children from birth to 16 months,” says Caroline Hood, The Family Partnership Vice President of Programs. “Brain science tells us that the earlier we can intervene with our wrap-around services for families, the more difference we can make in healthy child development.”

Those services include access to unified therapies, parenting development, and other services identified by a dedicated caseworker.

For enrollment, contact Cassaundra Davis via email at cdavis@thefamilypartnership.org.

Congratulations to Lorena Pinto, Director of The Family Partnership PRIDE program, for receiving the Catalytic Leader Award from the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

This award recognizes Lorena for her work advocating for programs and policies to end gender-based violence, and for creating a lasting impact in our community.

In receiving the award, Lorena recognized the contributions of both her PRIDE (Promoting Recovery, Independence, Dignity and Equality) staff, and the sex-trafficking survivors whose “voice” she represents.

“I’ve had the opportunity to shape, build and mold, and ultimately invest in an amazing team in PRIDE,” she said. “As a leader, I am someone who stands behind a survivor and gives them the space to share their knowledge and expertise.”

Shifting community perceptions of sex trafficking:

Lorena works side by side with program staff doing outreach to those experiencing sex trafficking on the Lake Street corridor. She works to shift community perceptions of sex trafficked individuals from being seen as sources of crime and trouble to being viewed as neighbors who need the community’s assistance and support. Lorena has provided training to over 1,500 community members including law enforcement and service providers and strengthened relationships with community partners including Hennepin County, law enforcement and neighborhood associations.

A triple-threat in leadership:

Lorena has passion and deep expertise in her work, but will also roll up her sleeves to get things done. That is the mark of an exceptional leader.

Molly Greenman, President & CEO, The Family Partnership.

Helping diversity leadership: 

Lorena not only empowers her staff at PRIDE to grow in their positions, she serves as co-director of the Twin Cities chapter of the New Leaders Council – an organization that helps equip leaders of color with the skills to run for office, manage campaigns, create start-ups and network with other thought leaders.

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The Family Partnership was chosen as one of only ten organizations across the United States to work on the Alliance’s Change in Mind initiative which promotes using neuroscience in programming and advocating for its use in public policy, in order to revitalize communities.

Through this partnership with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, The Family Partnership has made great strides in building families, vital communities, and better futures for children in the communities that we serve. Recently, John Everett Till, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Innovation at The Family Partnership, has written a compelling article for Alliance for Strong Families and Communities about how social services can use a 2Gen approach to fight poverty but while using this approach to fight poverty can these social services use this approach to help the racial equity problem in this country, which is a huge barrier for people when trying to escape the cycle of poverty:

Getting Things Right for Racial Equity

By John Till, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Innovation

“Raise your hand if you believe we can end poverty” asked keynote speaker Anne Mosle, vice president and executive director of Ascend at the Aspen Institute, as she opened the first-ever Minnesota 2Gen Summit last fall. The room of over 150 policymakers, advocates, and practitioners working with children and families was full of raised hands. That optimism is good news for state and national efforts to end poverty through a two-generation approach that engages both parents and children around a set of strategies to address intergenerational gaps caused by adverse childhood experience and mental health, families’ isolation within communities, disparities in educational attainment and employment, household financial precarity, and the need for increased access to early education for children in vulnerable households. People believe change is possible, and have the will to achieve it.  

So how about racial equity? If the question had been posed this way: “Raise your hand if you believe we can end racism?” Or this way: “Raise your hand if you believe we can achieve racial equity?” Would as many hands have been raised? Maybe not.  

I knew I was working in the right organization seven or eight years ago, when I ran into our CEO at a “Dreamer’s” march for the future of immigrant youth. But since the 2016 elections, a lot has changed in our country and community. My partner, an immigrant from the Philippines, and I watch the nightly news very intently. Our country is very divided. While many recognize how violent and traumatizing it is to split up undocumented families through aggressive immigration enforcement, many others—including some of our neighbors—were very happy to see DACA’s limited amenities taken away. Similarly, intolerable acts of police violence against African American communities continue (as they have since our nation’s founding) and we clearly lack the political will as a nation to solve this problem and curb police violence.  

So where do we go from here? I’m very reluctant to take Voltaire’s stance that we should each mind our own business and simply “cultivate our own gardens.”  Ultimately racial equity will only be advanced if we join with the social movements that are demanding change. Both public policy advocacy and social movement action are absolutely essential to advance racial equity. Our nation’s history proves that. And trying to promote racial equity solely through direct services is limited, and itself precarious.  

We’ve known this for a very long time. W.E.B. DuBois’s 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk has a chapter on the Black Reconstruction and why it failed. The educational and social programs of the Reconstruction fell apart when the political forces that sought to promote racial equity lost ground in government. Reconstruction programs to educate and empower African Americans in the South were poorly funded to begin with, and did not have sufficient support to build strong local institutions. The gains of the Reconstruction were lost, setting back the struggle for racial equity for decades.  

Learning from these mistakes, we need to act on multiple levels. We need strong programs. We need to know that our programs work at least as well for minorities as they work for European Americans—this country has growing race-based disparities. Our organizations need to participate in the social movements of our day addressing immigrant rights, police violence against communities of color, and more. And we need to support public policy that brings a racial equity lens to all the decisions and resource allocations that elected officials and policymakers take.  

Are we ready for this? With growing disparities, we have a limited amount of time to get things right.  

Join the Alliance Peer Exchange group on Advancing Equity, which brings together leaders from the social sector who work to develop and advance diversity, equity, and inclusion as a driving force in meeting the needs of children, families, and communities.

Explore Our Rich History

The Family Partnership, as it is known today, was founded in 1878 as the Minneapolis Humane Society to protect and serve children that were being abused or exploited. Explore the rich history of The Family Partnership in A Splendid Work: 125 Years (published in 2003). The engaging narrative describes the challenges families and individuals in Minneapolis have faced, and, how our work has continually transformed to meet the needs of the most vulnerable in our community.

Read

Minneapolis, MN (January 23, 2018) – Molly Greenman, President and CEO of The Family Partnership, has been named chair of the National Alliance for Strong Families and Communities Board of Directors. The Alliance is a network of more than 400 high-impact human-serving organizations across the United States who share a common vision of creating a healthy and equitable society so children, adults, and families may achieve their full potential. In her role as chair, Greenman will provide visionary leadership to the Alliance.

The Family Partnership is one of ten organizations across the United States and Canada working on the Alliance’s brain science initiative Change in Mind: Applying Neurosciences to Revitalize Communities, established in 2015 in partnership with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Palix Foundation’s Alberta Family Wellness Initiative.

I am excited to be a part of the leadership for this cohort.

Molly Greenman, President and CEO of The Family Partnership,

The Alliance joins human service organization leaders in peer learning and best practices to infuse emerging neuroscience discoveries into public policy and direct services for families and children.

Greenman explained: Research has shown that experiences in the first three years of life strongly influence the physical architecture of the brain. Just as a home needs a sturdy foundation, so does a child, said Greenman; and that foundation is made of positive interactions between parent and child.

Those positive interactions are at risk of toxic stress: abuse, neglect, addiction, mental illness, and chronic poverty, said Greenman. The long-term impact of exposure to toxic stresses are wide-ranging and include increased the risk of anxiety, depression, addiction, and diabetes in adult life. “Toxic stress experienced at a young age can shorten a lifespan by 20 years,” said Greenman. “This, in turn, increases risk and costs to our communities.”

But, Greenman adds, there is good news: “We can realign our own service systems and public resources to do a better job in treating—and preventing—exposure to toxic stress,” she said. “Aligning service systems with the science will help us increase the pace of innovation here in Minnesota as well as around the country,” said Greenman, “especially when you consider our own state’s focus of resources on early childhood education and care.”

Greenman’s guidance has been integral to the Alliance for many years; most notably, she chaired the Alliance of the Future Taskforce, a strategic planning effort that identified a refocused vision and theory of change for the organization. As a member of the board since 2011, she served as vice chair and as chair of the planning committee for the 2014 Alliance National Conference, held in Minneapolis.

“Molly has provided years of national visionary leadership as a member of the Alliance,” says Alliance president and CEO Susan Dreyfus. “We are honored she has agreed to serve as our board chair as we work to demonstrate the very best of our strategic action network of social sector organizations.”

Greenman has more than 40 years of expertise with children and families, innovative program development, and local and national family service initiatives. She co-founded the innovative shared administrative services model MACC CommonWealth and serves on the boards of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits and the Metropolitan Alliance of Connected Communities (MACC).

About the Family Partnership: Since 1878, The Family Partnership has been recognized as an innovative and highly impactful nonprofit in the Twin Cities area. Last year, more than 39,000 children and families benefitted from specialized services and programs offered in order to realize their full potential – regardless of income or origin. The Family Partnership is a registered 501c3 in the State of Minnesota. Please visit TheFamilyPartnership.org to learn more.

The Alliance for Strong Families and Communities is a strategic action network of thousands of committed social sector leaders who through their excellence, distinction, and influence are working to achieve a healthy and equitable society. We aggregate the very best sector knowledge and serve as an incubator for learning and innovation to generate new solutions to the toughest problems. We accelerate change through dynamic leadership development and collective actions to ensure policies and systems provide equal access and opportunity for all people in our nation to reach their fullest potential through improvements in health and well-being, educational success, economic opportunity, and safety and security. Go to alliance1.org for more information.

#BetterTogether

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