Hello Collaborative Partners from Boone, Colfax, Nance, and Platte Counties!  

I’m excited to share that the CFP Steering Committee (which is composed of 11 voting members) will be meeting in June in person for four hours to regroup, if you will, since COVID kept us apart for a while. I can’t wait for this meeting as it will help to create a road map for progressing the work of CFP. We all know that the best laid plans can and often do change; COVID certainly played a role with some of our work.  

There are so many moving pieces to the work of the collab including but not limited to Communities 4 Kids, Rooted in Relationships, Full-Service Community School, Community Response, our collaborative meetings, Thriving Families Safer Children meetings and more.

Whew! It’s all work that is needed in our communities, there’s just a lot going on. The Steering Committee will provide guidance for our collective work as a collaborative.

If you’re a Steering Committee member here's a spoiler alert for you…. during the meeting, we’ll be discussing shared measurements to track over time.  

I’ll share in the next newsletter or two what comes out of the meeting with the Steering Committee.  

Here’s the link for our next CFP collaborative meeting to be held June 1st from 9:30 – 11:00 a.m.

The agenda for the meeting includes estimates for how long we may spend on the topics shown below:

     9:30 a.m. Welcome 

     9:35 a.m. Exploring how we know when families are thriving, and our children are safer. 

Please give some thought as to your responses to these questions ahead of time…       

What do you do in your work to help families thrive and keep children safe? 

How would we know families are thriving, our children are safer?



     9:55 a.m. Conversation about growing need of people/families who migrate to the  United States and our communities who do not have immigration status or status that is pending and do not quality for benefits (SNAP/Medicaid/ADC) 

     10:15 a.m. Sharing time

     Adjourn at 11:00 a.m.

Knowing that some of you reading this go into the homes of people you’ve never met, on behalf of CFP, we applied for and received Impact Grant funds from the Columbus Area United Way to provide a “Personal Safety for the Home Visitor” training. This four-hour free training is provided by the Omaha Academy and is intended for those who go into homes of others or who work alone or nearly alone in non-profit settings with the public. You matter. We want to help keep you safe by providing you with skills to protect yourself should they be needed.  

Save Thursday, July 14 from 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. for this training. More information to come!

PIWI is coming back! After some recovery time with Covid, we are offering up PIWI again in our community. What is PIWI? It's a play group for parents/caregivers and their young children ages 0-3 years old. The group offers opportunities to talk about infant development in a fun and playful environment focusing on the confidence and joy of the parent/caregiver and baby.   

We will be offering PIWI in different locations throughout the fall and/or spring at Schuyler, YFFC and Saint Bonaventure Preschool and Childcare. Please share the flyer in this newsletter with anyone who could benefit from this amazing FREE program that is being offered in our community. 

Our trainers are amazing and are excited to welcome new families to support, spend time and connect with on the most important topic in life, parenting.

Rooted in Relationships is proud to be a supporter in this and encourages all parents to see the amazing benefits they can receive from this opportunity in their community. 

Check out the new 211 web site! It is easier to use and have added several more tools for communicating with their trained staff than just a phone call. This would be a good time to review your organization’s information for referrals, or, if you are not currently listed, add your programs under the “Agencies” tab at https://ne211.org/.