WAYNE & PIKE COUNTIES, PA — When the idea of bringing a family center to the Wayne/Pike area first came up, it was “totally foreign to us,” said Tony Herzog, former Wayne County …
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WAYNE & PIKE COUNTIES, PA — When the idea of bringing a family center to the Wayne/Pike area first came up, it was “totally foreign to us,” said Tony Herzog, former Wayne County Commissioner. “We didn’t have any idea exactly what was gonna take place or who they served or any of that.”
However, Herzog said, “I have to tell you, it was an honor to be involved with this program.”
The Wayne County Family Center (WCFC) celebrated its first 30 years of existence with a ceremony on October 14. The center’s founders, members of the center’s staff and people the center has helped throughout the years shared memories and experiences with the space.
The WCFC supports young children and their families, providing free early-learning services and programs to any family in Wayne and Pike counties.
The center’s programming includes the Parents as Teachers (PAT) program, delivered to the community as part of the center’s role with the Early Head Start program. In PAT, the center has staffers visit parents and provide information and resources through the first five years of a child’s life.
In addition, the center offers programing through its physical location in Hawley.
WCFC Director Michele Young said she felt compelled to put together the celebration while working in her office, where she could see the massive binders stuffed with info from the center’s founding.
“What I have done over the years is I’ve gone through them, and there’s endless documentation,” Young said. “There was so much work involved—so much detail, so many meetings, so much documentation, so many deadlines, and add to that the bureaucracy and red tape of starting something in the state of Pennsylvania.”
Attendees at the celebration made it clear that all that work didn’t just happen. It required concentrated collaboration across the spectrum of Wayne and Pike counties, from government leaders to school administration and beyond.
Clarissa Wimmers, current Wayne County Food Pantry Coordinator and the first staff member to join the center back when it began, said the work and collaboration that went into it was “amazing.”
“The things we did in the first six months to a year were phenomenal,” she said.
Wimmers said the WCFC was the first non-profit to hold that status in Pennsylvania; all the family centers created before it had been associated with school districts, she said.
Margaret Ennis, a founder and a board member for the center, said she was originally invited to the discussion table as a chief probation and parole officer for Wayne County.
She said there was a “wide scope of agencies and people” involved in those initial discussions. “I remember the first meeting, up in the conference room back with Wayne Highlands, and we were two deep around that table.”
“To see this whole room full of professionals come and create something that was so important to our community, and then still to be part of it in 30 years and to have watched it grow… it’s just wonderful, and what an experience,” she said.
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