Old Trout building soon to become a state-of-the-art family resource center

If anything remotely good came out of the Covid pandemic it was the greater light it shed on so many societal issues. 

Among those was the plight of families and children.

Whether it was lack of childcare or a sense of isolation or feeling overwhelmed and confused about where to go for resources or parenting guidance, the pandemic put it all in stark, desperate relief. 

That was just the parents. 

For the kids themselves, everything from socialization to education to access to learning resources to healthy home environments to experiential opportunities – all so critical to a young child’s brain development – had been made more tenuous or were altogether unavailable.

Of course, parents and child advocates knew those problems existed before Covid. What Covid did was show America to what extent they were plaguing our society.

It was clearer than ever where we were falling short in supporting families. It was more evident, too, how that neglect impacted young children in those critical formative years from birth to five. 

But what Covid also did was create government largesse on a massive scale as both Republicans and Democrats sought to avoid a looming economic calamity by issuing Covid relief money across all sectors. Much of the money from Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) went to state, county and local governments to address pressing needs that had long been ignored. Among those were childhood development programs. 

What is a Family Resource Center?

It was the confluence of those two things — the stark recognition of critical needs and the sudden unprecedented influx of financial support to address them — that allowed First 5 Fox Valley to embark on a major undertaking that by sometime next summer will yield the first-ever Family Resource Center in the Fox Valley. 

“We advocated for (ARPA funds) because we wanted to really have the opportunity to do something good for families with young children, because we know they were affected by the pandemic,” says Dr. Barb Tengesdal, Executive Director of First 5 Fox Valley, a child advocacy organization that has been around for years, most recently as the Early Childhood Coalition.  “We did listening sessions with parents and we kept hearing this thought: we need a Family Resource Center. Parents don't know where to go. They don't know where to find everything. They're running all over town. They want to get connected with other families. And the idea kept bubbling up about a family resource center. And that's when we pulled the partners together in our network, in our coordinated way, and said, is a family resource center something we can do?”

What is a family resource center? It is pretty much what its name suggests – a place for overwhelmed parents to go for support, resources (or directions to them), connections with other parents, a stimulating environment for their kids or information regarding their child’s development. That really just scratches the surface of what an FRC provides. In a way, an FRC is a clearinghouse for all the various childhood programs a community has available. The better-funded, accredited FRCs offer many of those programs themselves.

Parents need support

“If you don't know where to go as a parent, we're here to help you,” Dr. Tengesdal says. “I think that the resource part is really critical. There's a lot of wonderful partner service providers out there. I had a parent ask me ‘Do we have Head Start in Appleton?’ I'm like, yeah. They didn't know. It makes it simple.

“I think what makes it so different is there's cross-sector work that will go on here,” she adds. “There’s health care, so we're talking with Children's Wisconsin and ThedaCare and Mosaic across the street. I mean, there’s all of these health partnerships that can happen. There’s Catalpa Behavioral Health. There's education. We're connected with the Community Early Learning Center and the school districts. There's childcare that's going to be connected here. I mean, it's this cross sector of early intervention.”

In 2023, 34,000 families in Wisconsin utilized an FRC. There are 3,000 across the country serving more than 2 million families every year. 

A Cigna Group report revealed that 48% of all parents feel “overwhelming stress” most days, while a sense of loneliness pervades in 69% of mothers and 77% of single parents. 

Outagamie has been one of the few counties in the state without a family resource center. The enthusiasm is obvious: More than 60 local agencies have endorsed or signed on as partners with the Fox Valley Family Resource Center.

The perfect place at the right price

With the Covid relief funds dedicated to Outagamie County and Appleton, First 5 Fox Valley began seeking grants for their cause. Both came through in a big way. The county ponied up $2 million and the city gave an additional $750,000.

After F5FV and its partners decided to pursue a family resource center something fortuitous dropped into their wish basket: the Trout Museum building suddenly became available after The Trout began construction of a brand new space down College Avenue. 

Dr. Tengesdal says the Trout was beyond generous, offering to sell the building to F5FV for what she says was well under market value. And with the ARPA money they received as well as donations from Plexus, the Nelson Family Fund, the Oneida Nation and private donors, they were able to purchase the building outright. While the new museum was being built, F5FV let the Trout remain in its old building. Dr. Tengesdal says there was never any question about that.

“Their building wasn't ready and we weren't ready,” she says. “So there was that reciprocal relationship. They needed a place to stay and we realized our mission is really aligned, to be community-centric and to be a place where everybody feels comfortable and welcome.”

The old Trout not only provides a historic, inviting space, it is right in the heart of downtown, in close proximity to the new library, The Building for Kids directly across the street, the YMCA and the Community Early Learning Center.

“So what really I think this changes is we have been needing a public facing space, a space where there are no barriers, there are no eligibility requirements,” Dr. Tengesdal says. “That there can be a place to come because you want to meet other grandparents or other parents with preemies. There hadn't been anything like that in our area, and I think that's what the pandemic helped us understand, that families were feeling isolated and unsupported.”

An ideal space

The building itself couldn’t be more ideal for F5FV’s vision. It features five floors, which First 5 Fox Valley plans to utilize thoroughly. Visitors will enter into a large, nature-themed, interactive play space for infants and toddlers. It will offer a toy-lending library and a resale store for infant and children’s items.

A family wellness center will inhabit the second level and will include art and technology as well as books and puzzles. 

Level 3 is the Early Learning Center which will offer preschool classes and childcare.

Level 4 is multi-purpose, with leased offices for partner agencies and areas for play therapy and health and vision screenings.

The top floor will primarily be used for parent education and agency meetings but with a capacity of 75, it is big enough to hold large-scale meetings as well. It comes equipped with state-of-the-art technology.

So much of what the Fox Valley Family Resource Center will ultimately become is based on the vision of parents emerging from listening sessions.

“We were looking for diverse voices,” Dr. Tengesdal says. “So we have a father who has two children and is married to a refugee. We have a parent that's from the LGBTQ community. We had two young single moms. 

“We need to support families to see themselves as the decision makers about their child's development,” Dr. Tengesdal says. “They’re the ones who create the house and the health and the education and so parents have to be at the driver's seat of decision making, with us as providers supporting them with good evidence-based information.”

That includes, crucially, developmental screenings, which will be an ongoing component of the Fox Valley Family Resource Center’s mission. F5FV uses the Help Me Grow program to assess a child’s developmental growth, information that offers important guidelines and strategies for a child’s needs and progress. 

Imagine, if you can

Dr. Tengesdal gives a lot of credit to Imagine Fox Cities, tasked in 2018 with creating a vision for the future of the Fox Valley, with planting the seeds for the new FRC. 

“They were asking, ‘What does economic development look like? What does family support look like?’” she says. “We’ve got the PAC here. We’ve got Lawrence University. We’ve got the new library. We’ve got the Trout Museum. Now we have First 5’s Family Resource Center. There is a sense of, if we support this piece, it grows every aspect of our community. It grows our public health. It grows our public well being. It grows our economic security.”

Not to mention, FRCs are so highly regarded for their effectiveness that they mostly exist outside of our current age’s political polarization. In part, that’s due to the fact that, according to the National Family Support Network, the return on investment is $4.93 for every dollar invested in a family resource center and saves $3.65 in child welfare spending.

Furthermore, the Omni Institute cites FRCs as being responsible for a 63% reduction in child abuse cases, while a Colorado Community Response evaluation claims FRCs lead to a 50% reduction in out-of-home placements. Finally, the Chapin Hall Research Institute credited FRCs with a 26% cut in child abuse cases.

A community-changer

The Fox Valley Family Resource Center will be one of only 10 accredited FRCs in the state, meaning it will have to meet fairly strict criteria.

“You’ve got to make sure you're doing the prevention work, make sure you're doing the child development work, and the parent education and the parent advising,” she explains. “A lot of people call themselves a family resource center but maybe they’re just opening up a play space. To do the Strengthening Families Program, to do the accredited piece, to do the evidence-based components, you have to be pulling it all together to make that happen. 

“And that means we want the state to begin to see the value of this a little bit more and to do some general purpose revenue that's more consistent,” she adds. 

In the meantime, F5FV has launched an $8 million capital campaign, of which they have raised nearly $4.3 million already. They will employ four full-time employees and there is much needed work on the 103-year-old building. 

For Dr. Tengesdal, who has overseen childhood development projects from North Dakota to California but has never been around to see them to fruition, this is a personal wish fulfillment.

“This is a program for me that I feel like, oh my gosh, I get to see it come to completion before I retire,” she says with a laugh. “Yeah, I get excited about that. And it’s scary, too. It's pushing me out of my comfort zone. I'm an educator, I'm not a fundraiser. But what I know this is going to be will change the community in big ways.”

Old Trout building soon to become a state-of-the-art family resource center © 2025 by Kelly Fenton is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0