We are currently moving our office, but our services and service area will remain the same. During this transition, if you need immediate 24-hour domestic or sexual assault crisis support, please call +1-804-612-6126. All other customer-related inquiries should be directed to our primary intake number, +1-804-362-6835.
We have moved our office, but our service area remains the same. If you need immediate 24-hour domestic or sexual assault crisis support, please call +1-804-612-6126. All other customer-related inquiries should be directed to our primary intake number, +1-804-362-6835.
Angela is a Director for Thrive Virginia and focuses on Early Childhood Education Services. With Thrive Virginia, her focus is to work with parents prenatally or those who have young babies. She provides intensive home visits for these families, promoting a positive relationship between parent and child.
“We try to get them into our program prenatally and we can work with the families up until the children enter school or the age of five, our primary focus is to prevent child abuse and or neglect.”
Additional resources for our families are a challenge. Transportation in rural areas can also be a challenge for our families. We have to go outside of the service area to get those services, and then that's when transportation comes into play, which has been difficult.
“But we do provide transportations as needed when we are able to, for our families to ensure that they get to at least their medical appointments.”
Safe and affordable housing is a major concern with our families. A lot of times we actually lose families because there's no affordable housing here, so the families have to move outside of the service area to obtain housing for their family.
A lot of times these are young mothers just really starting out, so there's no housing here. The families that we keep in the program. They do have housing. Some of them are really not what you would call safe housing. And then we have a number of families who are renting homes that are really not affordable to them, so they have that challenge.
In Virginia, Thrive’s family support specialists are trying to find resources to help families pay their rent, to keep them in their home, to prevent homelessness. At times we will assist with payment for hotel stays because the family is unable to find housing.
A lot of times we provide stipends or cards to assist families with additional food. Although a lot of families in the Thrive Virginia service area receive SNAP benefits, but its typically not enough to get them through the month. So therefore we seek resources to get them additional food for their homes, food card, or just groceries that we will take out to the families.
“Gas cards are a great need to assist the families with getting to their appointments, especially their medical appointments with the increasing gas prices has been a challenge for a lot of our families.”
Some participants in our service area have received cut off notices or some of them may have even been disconnected. As an agency, Thrive Virginia not only helps with utilities, but also provides diapers, wipes, and clothing if needed to the participants and families in our program.
“Part of our job is to reduce as many stressors as we can, and we try to also refer our children to other things like Head Start and Early Head Start.”
Early Head Start helps with the high cost of daycare because the children are actually in a daycare setting, so this service has really helped our parents to be able to seek employment.
We also provide the children in the program with developmental screens so we can make sure they're ready for kindergarten or preschool. If there are any suspected delays, we refer the families for further screening and evaluation. Family support specialists make sure the children are ready when it’s time for them to enter school.
“Another challenge out in this area with our families is mental health services. The services are here for them, but the stigma of mental health within a rural area continues to linger. So it's been challenging for us to get these families to seek mental health services. We are determined if we can get them to get mental health services and support, that we can move the needle in a positive direction in the work that we are doing with them.”
Yes, definitely. At least it's being talked about now more openly. I think that was one benefit.
We encourage all families in the program to set goals. When they set goals, they list steps that would've helped them reach that goal, or any barriers that may prevent them from reaching that goal.
“We celebrate with them each time they meet a goal or meet one of the steps in the goal. We celebrate with them to keep them encouraged , to continue to try to reach their goals that they set. This helps empower families and let them know that they're their child's first educator, that child's first everything.”
Thrive Virginia also encourages our parents to take leadership roles within their communities, in the school systems, and through their faith-based organizations. Thrive Virginia even encourages roles within its organization.
“We want them involved in the activities or in the planning for our program as well as our agency because they know themselves better and the community better.”
Families, the community, and organizations are welcome to donate items such as food, personal care items, baby items, clothing…to increase our pantry so that we can provide the families with those things as needed. .
They can go to our website, ThriveVA.org or call area code (804) 362-6835
Thrive Virginia uses person-centered and collaborative services to empower those fighting poverty to achieve individualized prosperity and community connections.
Our NEW Address:
211 Rocketts Way
Suite 200
Henrico VA 23231
Phone:
804-362-6835
Domestic Violence
Hotline:
877.966.4357
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