Box 3, Folder 11, Document 20

Box 3, Folder 11, Document 20

A STATEMENT ABOUT THE PARENT AND CHILD CENTER

PARENT AND CHILD CENTERS (PCC) are established to provide services for
disadvantaged families who have one or more children under the age of three.
Many of the families will also have several older children, or will be plan-
ning or expecting to have a baby.

In many cases, a PCC will be linked with a comprehensive Neighborhood
Service Center, an organization which offers the residents of a spacified
geographic area access to a wide range of services and processes designed
.to help them out of poverty. In others, a PCC may cooperate with a center
which may be organized around one certain function, such as a Neighborhood
Health Center. Such centers need not necessarily be funded by OKO, Affili-
ation with a Neighborhood Center facilitates one of the basic objectives of
the PCC, that of bringing the whole family into contact with a broad range
of services.

The PCCs are funded by the Office of Economic Opportunity in cooperation
with the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the Department of Labor,
and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Objectives

In general, the PCCs are established to help families to function in-
dependently and effectively and for their children to develop to their full
potential. In more specific terms, the programs developed by the planning
groups should have the objectives of:

Ll, Overcoming deficits in health, intellectual, social, and
emotional development and maximizing the child's inherent
talents and potentialities;

2, Improving the skills, confidence, attitudes, and motivations
of the parents as citizens, parents, and individuals;

a5 Strengthening family organization and functioning by involving
the youngest children, the parents, older children in the
Family, and relatives;

4, Encouraging a greater sense of community and neighborliness
among the families served by the center;

Sy Providing training and experience for both professionals and
non-professionals who may then be employed in work with parents
and children;

6. Serving as a locus for research and evaluation of progress toward
the objectives stated above.

The Atlanta Parent and Child Center is being planned in the Edgewood
Community,