The Impact of Care Corps

Maricela Guerrero, Executive Director, Rocketship California

At Rocketship California, Family Partnership and Advocacy is one of our regional priorities and I am so proud that we have a Care Corps program at each of our 13 schools dedicated to ensuring that all families have access to community resources and wrap-around services. Today I want to share a few key highlights from the Care Corps program, which is led by Associate Director Lorena Solorio and managers Adriana Luna, and Yaijaira Jaimes.

This year our Care Corps team has continued to bring essential services directly to our schools for students and families. For instance, they have provided health screenings (vision, dental, hearing) to thousands of Rocketeers on all our campuses and in turn had over 600 Rocketeers receive free eye glasses! We offered 3 vaccination clinics where over 100 students got their missing immunizations. And we implemented Food Distributions year-round and served over 700 families in SJ and the East Bay every month.

A new initiative this year was to launch Rocketship Parent University, a partnership with the Hispanic Foundation to provide learning opportunities for over 200 families to cover topics including parent & school partnerships, digital literacy, and access to CalKids College Funds. We also partnered with Servant Leaders to facilitate Triple P parenting workshops and graduated 80 families. We are excited to expand this work next year to include English as a Second Language (ESL) classes & GED courses for parents!

Our Care Corps Coordinators (CCCs) also seek to understand the unique needs among parents at their campuses and have responded to over 500 family requests for resources. Our coordinators have spent hours researching and meeting with families and partners to provide personalized support and give families exactly what they need. Examples include securing food and clothing donations, connecting families with financial support, finding affordable housing options through partner organizations, and much more. In fact, we have been selected as one of two schools in Santa Clara County to partner with the Santa Clara County Homeless Management Information System to better support our unsheltered families with housing in our communities.

Care Corps Coordinators have also collaborated with school leaders to meet with families experiencing severe hardships and at risk for chronic absenteeism. Care Corps Coordinators had over 820 of these parent check-in and meetings because they understand the impact attendance has on learning. As one parent shared, “My CCC helped me understand why it was important to attend school as well as gave encouragement for not only the boys but myself as well.” This would have been possible without the partnership and support from office managers and principals.

This work is not for the faint of heart and it requires much empathy and determination to help our families overcome so many obstacles to provide a safe place for their children so they can thrive in school and in life. Thank you to all of you for collaborating with your coordinators – that is power of “ONE band, ONE sound.” We are all in this together and the impact of Care Corps is best summed up with this, “My son loves school because of the care and comfort provided by the care corps support. Thank you for all that you do.”

Published on May 20, 2024