Neighborhood Center Evolvement
As agencies learned to trust each other, the leadership structure came into being and the collaborative established formal policies and procedures.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections-Milwaukee site visited Louisville, Kentucky to learn about Neighborhood Place, a neighborhood-based program that offered many services focused on serving vulnerable families. The visit was designed to help Milwaukee with its vision of integrating child welfare, economic support and behavioral health services as part of its Making Connections effort. The document is organized around the lessons learned including a shared vision, partnerships, resident involvement and evolution of the governing structure.
Louisville, Kentucky had previously participated in the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation’s Community Partnerships for Protecting Children initiative and also in the Casey Foundation’s Family to Family initiative. Both of these efforts emphasized team/shared decision making for children and families, community partnerships and improved outcomes for children impacted by the system. These initiatives provided the groundwork for developing the shared vision and goals of the neighborhood centers. The Louisville-Milwaukee peer match helped spell out the principles and capacities needed to strengthen family connections to other types of support.