One woman sought help applying for the state’s Medicaid program. Another had an appointment for the Women, Infants and Children (WIC) food program. Kids pretended to chop plastic vegetables and zoomed trucks as their parents talked with service providers.
They came to the Family Resource Center in Shakopee on a recent morning, knowing workers there could help them get what they needed — and find aid that they hadn’t known about.
Different versions of these one-stop hubs are popping up across Minnesota, connecting families and parents-to-be with services that support their health, well-being and economic stability. Some, like the Shakopee center, are backed by philanthropy. Another nine community resource centers, from Hibbing to Worthington, recently received state grants.
But state grants for the centers end in June 2027 and Gov. Tim Walz’s proposed budget doesn’t include money beyond that date, something supporters of the centers had hoped to see.
State and local government officials say improving access to programs and building community connection prevents families struggling with poverty or other challenges from entering the child protection system due to neglect or maltreatment.
Jennifer Compeau, of East Grand Forks, said her life could have been different if she had access to a community resource center in her early 20s when she discovered her son had a rare liver disease. She didn’t have good advice or many people to lean on, and spiraled down, she said.
She stopped work as she sought Medical Assistance, the state’s Medicaid program, and benefits for her son. She started drinking a lot, became increasingly discouraged, entered abusive relationships, lost her father and “leaned into meth.” Child protection got involved and eventually she lost custody of her son.
Compeau ended up homeless, addicted, living out of her vehicle and piecing together aid.
“I had dreamed of a community resource center” at the time, she said. “There needs to be a place where all of this [assistance] and connection is available to someone to help them. Because it is so much work to be … beaten down, just with no hope, nothing, and then to try to survive.”
Compeau, 36, is now a family resource coordinator for a Polk County Family Resource Center in East Grand Forks and serves on the state’s Community Resource Center Advisory Council. The center regularly helps families find child care, food and transportation, she said, but she could be assisting with anything from a lost birth certificate to a scholarship application for a child’s school trip.
Lawmakers devoted more than $7 million to community resource centers in the current state budget. Organizations getting grant dollars include nonprofits, a health care provider, Hennepin County and the White Earth Band of Chippewa. The state dollars don’t necessarily mean new bricks-and-mortar locations. In St. Paul, the Wilder Foundation, for example, is using its grant to add staffing at existing programs to help families navigate resources.
Related Coverage
“The point of community resource centers is to provide support for people without sending them necessarily into the system — into the child protection system, into the social welfare system,” said Rebecca St. George, assistant commissioner of child safety and permanency at the Department of Children, Youth and Families. She called the centers “one of the most exciting things we’re doing.”
Offering families a space to get care and assistance from people who understand their culture and won’t be judgmental can stop problems before they start, she said.
Margareth Gurreonero, a family resource center navigator, plays with a client’s child as the parent speaks to a WIC program specialist at the Shakopee Family Resource Center. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
A growing resource in Minnesota
Various versions of community resource centers have started across Minnesota in recent years with the help of government and philanthropic dollars. But funding is often temporary, center supporters said.
