HCA Foundation featured their visit to The Family Center in the Community Forum Blog on February 6, 2015. "This week our staff had the opportunity to visit The Family Center.  In a cozy house on Thompson Lane we gathered with The Family Center’s staff to learn about their plans to expand their programs and impact."

Discovery Center and The Family Center Partner for Quality Family Time

“Research demonstrates that child abuse and neglect impacts our community through costly negative social, emotional, and even physical health outcomes such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer,” said Dawn Eaton, executive director of The Family Center. “Healthy parenting practices are foundational for lifelong health and help children grow into healthy, productive citizens. Our focus is to prevent child abuse and neglect through teaching positive parenting skills to vulnerable parents.  The Discovery Center memberships complements our work and will be utilized to encourage and empower the parents to spend quality time with their children.  It’s an honor to partner with the Discovery Center.”

NBC's miniseries, The Slap, premieres February 12 and is generating important conversations about parental attitudes and appropriate discipline. The trailer to The Slap features family and friends enjoying themselves at a barbecue when a misbehaving boy swings a bat at another child. Because the boy's parents do nothing to correct his behavior, the father of the other child rushes over, grabs the boy and verbally reprimands him for not listening to adults. The boy then kicks his shin which leads to a forcefully administered slap from the other parent. 

Find out how many parents and children we were able to impact last year by checking out our 2013/2014 statistical infographics.

"This will never work!" said the mom, new to The Family Center parenting class. "Being tough on kids is what helps them the most." It was obvious this monther had seen more than her fair share of parenting challenges and being tough on her kids was the only skill she felt comfortable using. "Empathy is an important skill we teach in our parenting classes," said Jenn, Parent Educator. 

In July 2014, the Children’s Cabinet rolled out kidcentraltn.com, a one-stop shop for Tennessee families to connect with important information and resources provided by state departments.  This new website organizes content from across departments, making it easier for families to find what they need. 

We would like to share with you a poem written by Jake, the father of a six-year-old, who graduated from our parenting class at the jail.

Watch the video from News Channel 5's Open Line interview with our Associate Director, Jennifer Drake-Croft. How far is too far when it comes to discipline? 

In Rutherford County, cases of abusive neglect of children are at least twice as common as physical and sexual abuse, local children's advocates said.