Phoenix Family Housing

This grant is designated to help expand a new School Readiness Program at Parvin Estates in North Kansas City. "The need for this program has slowly emerged over the past few years," say Kimber Myers Givner, Executive Director of Phoenix Family Housing.

Currently, Phoenix Family provides an academic-based after-school program at Parvin Estates with approximately 60 children enrolled. Over the past couple of years, the program has had an increasing number of younger children (under the age of 6) sporadically attend with their older siblings. As younger children began attending more regularly, it became evident that they were unprepared to enter kindergarten. Initial assessments of school readiness showed that, while their language skills were only slightly behind standards, their writing and literacy skills were significantly delayed."Like many other low-income children, the children at Parvin are more likely to have difficulty in school. The question we needed to answer was: "How do we help them succeed in school," says Givner. "We know that the more ready children are to enter school the more likely they will be to succeed." Initially Phoenix Family tried to connect parents with other community programs. However, the limited English of many parents presented unique barriers – such as language confusion between the parents and the service providers, difficulty in locating unfamiliar places, confusion about eligibility requirements, and fear of being reported to the government and having their child removed from the home. After these initial attempts failed, in the spring of 2011, Phoenix Family launched a school prep initiative led by site staff.

With the support of Irven E. and Nevada P. Linscomb Foundation, Phoenix Family will use the grant funds to hire an Early Education Specialist (EES) to offer personalized school readiness instruction to children living at Parvin who are 6 or under.