Janine Jennings
The Family Support Center of Ogden has been teaching family education for over 15 years, and we are the longest running agency to work with USU. We talk a lot about step family relationships, communication, parenting, non-biological children, parenting styles, financial issues, we even talked about some legal issues that families sometimes run into conflict management. We also provide free childcare and dinner for our classes. And then we have concurrent classes for not only the adults, but for children and youth ages six to 18.
Nick Porath
Who is all eligible to take these courses?
Janine Jennings
Any family that is in like a co-parenting or step family type situation, it could even be foster parents or adoptive parents, we've had grandparents that are raising their grandkids or aunts and uncles. It could be all kinds of different combinations of families. It doesn't have to be, you know, like your, what you would think of as step family, there's actually quite a few more combinations of families than you would think.
Nick Porath
Do you have to live in the Ogden area in order to take one of these courses?
Janine Jennings
No, we serve anybody in the community, we've had some people drive all the way out from Wyoming actually.
Nick Porath
Do you have any final thoughts or things that you'd like to share regarding step family education?
Janine Jennings
Sure, I think one of the most amazing things about this step Family Education course is that we've seen such drastic change in family dynamics that, you know, we'll have parents come in and just complain about their teenage daughter and then the teenage daughters complaining about the stepmom and by the end of the seven weeks, they're communicating differently. They're working collaboratively, and it's just really amazing to watch and see the change and the growth within families.
