Family Focus 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. To read the latest issue of our newsletter, click HERE.

News

Photos

Our Programs

News: Health Awareness Festival May 31

Family Focus Aurora will be holding a Health Awarness Festival for its program participants on Saturday, May 31, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., in parking lot at the East Aurora High School, 500 Tomcat Lane.

The festival will include food, games, entertainment, door prizes, information tables, drawing contests, and a performance, I'm Still Here - all free!

Please R.S.V.P. by Friday, May 23: 630-844-2550.

(Click here for a copy of the event flier in English. Pulsa aquí por Español..)

Photos:
When our teen parents and their toddlers got together December 7, they put together collages made of tiny hand prints, traced from their own toddlers' hands. For photos, click here.

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 .

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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.

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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.

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