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Aurora
Family Focus Aurora is Aurora’s first-ever comprehensive family support center for Spanish-speaking families. It features an extensive arts program for teens and provides the only area after-school program that includes bus transportation.
News: Read Our Newsletter
Our Programs:
Citizenship, Prevention Initiative, After-School Program
Making Citizenship Possible
Family Focus Aurora is playing a lead role in the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights’ New Americans Initiative in the Aurora, Joliet, and Elgin areas. Staff provides immigrants seeking citizenship with outreach, civic engagement classes, assistance with citizenship applications, and legal support, in partnership with Centro Cristo Rey and Heartland Alliance’s Midwest Immigrant and Human Rights Center.
At New American Initiative Citizenship Rallies, held once a month at various locations around the Aurora- Elgin-Joliet area, immigrants can get the personalized information they need. Should they apply? How to apply? How to get ESL or citizenship classes? Family Focus staff and volunteer lawyers find the right answers for each person. In order to help 1,000 immigrants enter the citizenship pipeline during the first year of the program, Family Focus Aurora is conducting extensive outreach to churches, schools and soccer leagues as well as holding workshops and going door-to-door.
Need help with citizenship? Contact Family Focus Aurora .
Prevention Initiative Program Helps Young Children and their Parents
Family Focus Aurora offers Prevention Initiative programming for children ages 0-3 and their
parents. Serving the families of East Aurora, the new Family Focus program addresses obstacles
immigrant parents face in preparing their children for success in school.
The Aurora Center offers individual case management for families, early literacy training, and support groups and home visits for parents of young children. While parents meet for group sessions, attend parenting skills training and get support for their individual concerns, their children are engaged in developmentally appropriate activities.
Thanks to a team-building session supported by the Chicago Community Trust, Family Focus Aurora was able to draw on the collective expertise of other Family Focus centers with existing 0-3 programs for immigrant families when designing a program geared to the needs of East Aurora. This program, supported by funding from the Illinois State Board of Education ’s Prevention Initiative, is designed to assist Latino immigrant families in preparing their children for school and offer them easy access to developmentally appropriate learning experiences for their children.
After School Program Expanded, Enriched
With new multi-year Teen Reach funding from the Department of Human Services, Family
Focus Aurora has expanded its after school offerings. The Aurora Center reintroduced after
school services to East Aurora High School, where college students and volunteers work with
teens one-on-one. After school programming at Simmons and Waldo middle schools were also opened
to 15 more children at each site. Using the Family Focus van, the center continues to offer a
safe ride home to after school partiticipants.
To read the recent issues of our newsletter, click on the links below:
• Family Focus News • Get Involved • Hug-a-Book • Midwest Learning Center
• Contact Us • Site Map
Family Focus, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization.
Page updated: 6/10/2009 © Family Focus, Inc. 2009