South Phoenix resident Denice Marquez has been bringing her kids to University of Arizona Cooperative Extension’s Roosevelt Family Resource Center for more than a decade.

Marquez, 33, started coming when her oldest son, now 12, was seven months old and kept coming back with another son, now 9, and two daughters, she said.

“It's been very helpful. I remember my older son, when he started kindergarten, he already knew his ABCs and his shapes because of the classes that they offer,” Marquez said.

At one point, she had three kids under age 5 and needed somewhere to go for interaction and to keep her children busy in a productive way.

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“Sometimes I didn't know what to do with them at home, so I would come here. Sometimes they would just play, or I would take advantage of every single class they had, and we would be here all the time. They loved it,” Marquez said.

Parent-child interaction

U of A-Roosevelt is primarily a parent-child interaction and education center for families of children up to age 5 and expecting parents.

The classes and story times teach parents how to interact with preschoolers in ways that lay groundwork for school and life in general. It’s mostly direct interaction between parents and children – family development, a model that has been in place for 16 years, said center founder Patty Merk, an Extension area agent and regional specialist who holds a Ph.D. in family studies and human development from U of A.

Many of the kids are also from small families who can’t get into Head Start and can’t afford expensive private preschools, Merk said.

“They're at home, and what usually becomes the babysitter is electronic.  So they're learning how to be with other children, as well as the parents developing those wonderful social relationships with other people that have children the same age,” she said.

The center applies five protective factors that research shows reduce child abuse and increase family wellbeing and stability, Merk said.

They include social connection, children’s social and emotional competence, parenting and child development knowledge, parenting resilience and support in times of need. The parents’ social connections are an important part of the center.

“They learn a lot from each other. ‘Hey, I tried this’ or ‘I went here, and it worked for me.’ They’re reinforcing the advice that we give them, in terms of resources,” Merk said.

That goes for the children’s social exposure, too. Every week they have a free family pizza night with salad and fruit that draws upward of 30 people. It’s a chance for the children, some of whom don’t have siblings, to get out of the house, she said.

“They are learning how to be with each other and how to get along. It’s an opportunity for their children to see and play other children their age, which they don't get at home,” she said.

Pandemic effects

The pandemic left a mark on child development, too, which has lingering effects now. Some of the kids who come to U of A-Roosevelt were basically born into isolation, with minimal social interaction or even exposure to relatives for two years. It can have a cascading effect on education, Merk said.

“Social and emotional development has a big effect on your ability to learn. If you're nervous, because you've never been around other kiddos, or you inadvertently create a conflict with another kid, because you don't know how to share, or you're not reading social cues, you're going to struggle learning,” she said.

Marquez’s 8-year-old son used to have trouble sharing. She credits classes and socialization at Roosevelt with helping him learn, she said. 

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“He would always fight with other kids – ‘Oh, this is my slide.’ Then when I started bringing him here, he started learning how to share, even though he had siblings at home,” she said.

U of A-Roosevelt’s funding comes from an array of sources, but primarily from the state early childhood initiative First Things First.

The list of offerings is long, and all are offered at no cost. There are baby care workshops, small-group play-and-learn classes that connect parents to kids, parent support groups, hands-on early literacy and story time where they give out books, science exploration and more.

Forging relationships

Outreach Director Tamara Floyd keeps the center connected to the community. Her job covers a lot of ground. At its base, her role is connecting families to resources. Some of that is directly connecting with people who come to the center, but a lot of it is meetings with groups that can make sure the community knows what U of A-Roosevelt offers, she said.

“So we're interacting with other boards, commissions, community organizations, talking about what we do, who we serve and letting them know that we have these resources for families,” Floyd said.

Another part of Floyd’s role is bringing in resources – soap, lotion, hygiene products, food, clothing and other essentials - that the center then gets to families. She fosters partnerships that spur donations from organizations and businesses across the community. Last December they were able to give away almost 300 donated laptops.

U of A-Roosevelt also brings other helping agencies into the neighborhood, easing the path to aid. Helping Families in Need, a nonprofit also funded primarily through First Things First, comes to the center to help people connect to state or other benefits, Floyd said.

“They come every Thursday and help families renew or apply for AHCCCS medical coverage, for SNAP and for childcare support. They can help families right here. We make appointments for them, or they can walk in. Once a week, they're here to help our families navigate through that system, because it's kind of hard,” she said.

Those Extension relationships with non-profits, government agencies and private businesses keep communication open and opportunities cinsistently available to South Phoenix residents, she said.

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Floyd cohost’s safety check events with the Phoenix Fire Department and leads car seat workshops where parents get free car seats and learn how to properly install and use them, she said.

Building community

The center is in a former school that now houses the nonprofit Martin Luther King Jr. Early Childhood Center – Community H.U.B, which includes U of A-Roosevelt, childcare programs, Early Head Start, Head Start and an after school program.

The neighborhood is culturally diverse. It’s predominantly Hispanic with African-American and Middle Eastern populations, including Extension Outreach Assistant Hadeel Aborached, who first came to the center as a parent and now works there. She has helped expand programming with Arabic translation and popular videos in Arabic. 

Many of the classes are bilingual Spanish and English, which opens the door to learning languages very early, Merk said.

Merk and Floyd are also part of Future Framework, a South Phoenix collaboration working toward developing a property left vacant by major road re-routings near the intersection of Broadway and 24^th Street.

The Future Framework plan was recommended by the City of Phoenix. Developers have agreed to relieve the local food desert with a grocery store, medical offices, locally-based retail, and affordable housing, Merk said.

Nationally the concept of family resource centers recently gelled into a federal definition that helps U of A-Roosevelt and other centers fit into the more established network of social services, she said.

“We're part of a national family support network that has led the charge on that, to try to say, ‘Now what do we need to do so that we can be part of the true fabric of the social services networks?’” said Merk, who sits on a regional First Things First council.

One of the state’s goals is to expand the network of family resource centers into more rural and tribal communities, she said.

Learn about other Cooperative Extension family resource centers here.