Dakota Family Solutions

Programs: The organization continues to offer many services to strengthen local families, including supportive services/groups, educational/preventative resources/events, along with some mentoring/counseling (all counseling services are currently free of charge). All our services basically come under this umbrella and many of our services overlap with each other and often are in partnership with other community organizations, making it difficult to separate them from each other. A point of special emphasis is on single mothers and teen/young mothers. In 2017, dakota family solutions (dfs) provided for this population various support groups, a high school educational class, and community events in partnership with area churches and agencies, along with some free of charge mentoring/counseling. Specifically, dfs offered an education class through the public school for teen/young moms and weekly support group for them through the school year. 13 teen/young moms participated in one or both programs. 1 mom took our class for credit at williston high school. There was a playgroup offered for teen/young moms throughout the summer. We had 3 moms and 4 kids participate. We also had weekly support group for single moms with 15 single moms attending one or both of our spring (15 week) or fall (12 week) sessions. A boundaries class was held at the family crisis shelter for women (most were single mothers in crisis) with 9 women attending one or more of our 9 weekly sessions. We also offered this same class to women in the community. We met at the williston arc with 7 women attending one or more of the 9 weekly sessions. We had a second class called the confident woman for women in the community with 13 women attending one or more of the 11 weekly sessions. 6 community events in partnership with area churches and agencies were held for teen/young/single moms throughout the year emphasizing self-care and parenting with 22 mothers attending one or more of these events. 42 children were also served during these events. 8 women met individually for one-on-one mentoring. In 2017, a total of about 60 women were served with the above described services, with about 59 children who were often involved with services as well. Our autism support group for parents of children with autism met 9 times monthly throughout the school year with 33 adults attending one or more of the meetings. Two of these meetings were special events for the autism support group families including a christmas party, and a community hay maze event. We offered our first summer day camp for children with autism in july; 17 children attended, 18 volunteers were involved in this event which was held at the local community center. Another community event was our giving christmas tree held in partnership with a local private school. We had 137 children in need of gifts anonymously provided for by area community members. We had about 5 volunteers help with this endeavor. We continued our community infertility support group for women. There were 12 sessions offered with 5 women attending one or more of them. We further sponsored a special speaker for the local schools called fight the new drug, addressing the dangerous and addictive nature of pornography. We had about 1500 junior high and high school students participate in this event, along with school staff members. We also had an associated parent night presentation in which 37 parents participated. Dfs also assisted with a suicide prevention presentation for tioga school staff members. Dfs provided two 5 session (total of 10 weeks) marriage enrichment courses through a local church. 9 couples (18 people) were involved in these sessions. In addition, we provided about 13 family and relationship/marriage sessions/consultations. We also provided about 22 mentoring sessions for women including single/young moms. All our services were offered free of charge, other than a small fee to cover the cost of materials for the 2 women's groups held at the local recreation center. Some of those fees were waived as well because of financial strain for participants.