Family Programs
At Belknap House, we offer a variety of programs designed to support parents and children during their stay with us. These programs meet once a week for 4-6 week periods, usually with 2 rounds a year depending on the move-out rate of families. Each family will participate in the programming at least once, with certain programs extending through case management after the group course ends.
Financial Freedom
Parents learn how to manage their income, budget, and create a financial plan to meet their goals. By learning how to manage money, create bank accounts, and be accountable with credit cards and paying off debts, our parents are able to save money, pay living expenses, and save to move into independent living. Parents have group sessions to learn basics and then have continued individualized sessions to help them apply skills taught in groups to their own family budgets.
Food & Nutrition
Cooking Matters and Slow Cooker Meals Made Easy: A team from UNH Cooperative Extension comes to Belknap House to teach parents about food and nutrition to ensure that their families are prioritizing health and sustainability within their budgets. In each class, parents make a new meal that teaches them tricks and tips for cooking, adding nutrition to meals easily, and creating a meal plan that can be budgeted. At the end of the class, a slow cooker session is added where families each receive their own slow cooker and learn different meals. Parents are also taken on a trip to the local Hannaford Supermarket with a small amount of money as a class to learn shopping habits and practice choosing budget and nutrition-friendly meals.
Little Ones Cooking Class
A special edition of the Food & Nutrition class that is catered to 'little ones' aged 4-6. This class covers food groups, health and physical activity importance, and health through hygiene.
Understanding Behavior
Parenting: Guided by a professional consultant, Melissa Beane, parents learn that Adverse Childhood Experiences can affect parenting. Through this course, Melissa works with the parents and the children to help them understand the root of certain stressors, create resiliency and coping skills for the family unit, and teach parents personalized parenting techniques within their family unit. This course continues through the duration of a family's stay at Belknap House as Melissa works with families to meet goals set with the Shelter Program Manager to prepare for independent living and parenting.
How to Talk to My Kids about Drugs
Parenting: Professionals provide information to help parents understand trends in substance use, how to talk with their children about substances, and available resources to help.
Tenant 101
How to Build a Great Tenant-Landlord Relationship: Housing Specialists from the community teach parents the tools of successful tenants, assist with housing requests to help families search for available housing, and create networking connections for families to decrease the likelihood of continued homelessness. This course provides parents with real-life skills and connections to help them prevent eviction, provides guidance for filling our housing applications and other documentation, create connections to find housing, and have resources in the community to support them after they transition.
We are always looking for new courses to add to our programming and welcome volunteers and industry professionals to reach out if they have a skill or course that would be beneficial to our parents as they work hard to bring their families out of homelessness and into a sustainable and brighter future!
