Have you ever noticed how many programs out there serve only one age group?
Even when we can manage to combine some form of childcare with adult classes, it’s often not free and basically never addresses the needs older children.
This isn’t because we believe that youth and teens are unimportant, or that our students have no children, or that it’s easy for a family to be in four different places for four different services all at the same time. It’s because the funding is dictating the structure of our services, and not the actual need.
That being said, without funding we wouldn’t have any services.
Solutions?
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Larger agencies will expand their programs and mission to pull in funding for programs that start as ancillary to the main program but sometimes take on a life of their own. Smaller agences will often apply to grantmakers who do not think as narrowly as government funders to get the funding for ancillary services. I have also seen smaller agencies successfully collaborate to help each achieve their respective missions, including sharing space.