LBCC Parenting Education receives a $90,000 grant through Oregon Parenting Educatiion Collaborative.

Who: The Linn-Benton Community College Parenting Education Hub
What: Recieves a grant for $90,000 a year for the next three years through the Oregon Community Foundation and the Oregon Planning Education Collaborative.
Where:Linn-Benton Community College in Albany, Oregon
When: 2011
Why: To provide funding for faculty while providing more parenting and daycare education, as well as expanding services provided through LBCC's Family Connections.


The Linn-Benton Community College Parenting Education Hub is receiving a grant of $90,000 a year for the next three years from The Oregon Community Foundation (O.C.F.) through The Oregon Planning Education Callaborative.

The $90,000 a year grant will help LBCC's Parenting Education Program with funding needed for faculty, support additional parenting educational classes, and provide training and resources for parent educators; including major curriculum training and annual workshops. The grant will also give the ability to move services out into the rural communities that don't have parenting and education services.

"The grant is giving us the ability to do more of what we already do. We do a lot of collaborations with different groups and counties that serve the same purposes such as parenting education classes," said Cyrel Gable who is a faculty member at the LBCC's Family Resources and Parenting Education Hub.

LBCC's Parenting Education and Family Connections departments function as a parenting education hub for the Linn and Benton region, focusing on services to parents with children who are six and under.

According to Cyrel Gable, the hub does four main things;

*One is that they will be working with all the other organizations that revolve around serving parents to collectively see what the needs are of the parents in regions and if they are meeting the needs. The first step requires coordination of pulling everyone together.

"East Linn County in particular doesn't have as good of connections with the parents in the community like the Linn and Benton counties do and we have not had the funding in the past to better serve the rural areas." explained Gable. "The grant will allow a way to collect the other rural communities and connect us all together."

*The money left over from the first step will be used for setting up classes, which are either parent only or parent and child together only, that will result from the collaborated ideas from the rural communities. Classes will be for parents and their children of ages six and under to teach parent and toddler education.

"We are wanting to add more classes. We hope to add four to six the first year, six to eight the second, and so on." said Gable

The grant money doesn't add more staff positions, but allows the part-time staff to become full-time.

*The third step is to create a web site.

"We are to create a centralized information source for all parenting advice and oppurtunities." explained Gable.

The web site will show all the classes and information that every town has and not just what the LBCC college campus provides.

*The fourth step is to provide additional support and education for the educators and day care providers. The parenting hub would like to create a workshop that provides a major training in one of the curriculums, although they are not sure what the focus will be yet.

LBCC's Family Connections department will maintain being a centralized information and referral resource for parenting education oppurtunities and as a resource for getting daycare referrals.

Family Connections not only serves families with information on quality child care, a parenting advice line, and a source for information about available family support groups, but they also serve child care providers with information on how to start and manage a child care business, provides referrals from parents looking for child care, and provide training opportunities.

"The hub is in support of parenting education and does not care which organization is delivering the services needed.' explained Cyrel Gable, "If hub can link a need of a parent to another organization that can better help that parent then we will give them all the information about who can better help, or provide a certain service."

If you are a parent, or parent educator, who would like to see what resources are available in your community, or if you would like to know how you may help, you can contact them at the Linn-Benton Community College at 6500 Pacific Blvd. S.W. in Albany OR. You can also give them a call at (541) 917-4999.