Family Place is designed as a collaborative model. Family Place librarians partner and work with local service providers and early childhood educators to enhance the community environment for families with very young children and to reach new and/or underserved audiences. When conducting the Parent/Child Workshop series (a core component of Family Place), community agencies provide resource professionals as part of the program. In a well-developed Family Place Library, staff actively develop and promote collaborative services.

Libraries interested in becoming a Family Place are required to send one librarian and one administrator to a three-day Family Place Training Institute along with seven hours of pre-training online sessions. After the training, libraries are expected to implement the program during the following 18 months at which time an onsite visit is conducted by national staff. Family Place Libraries must complete an annual online survey to remain part of the network. Members ofthe Family Place Libraries™ network consistently offer the core components of the program, including staff trained at the Family Place Libraries Institute.

Local libraries develop and administer their Family Place services with technical support from the national network team. This support includes a National Training Institute, pre-and post-training webinars, an onsite visit from the national staff, access to specialists in child development and children’s library services, and a variety of support materials to assist in communications and planning. The national team also provides ongoing technical assistance via a Family Place symposium prior to Public Library Association (PLA) conferences, peer exchange and other online resources, and one-on-one email/phone consultation. Children’s services library staff, trained in Family Place principles and practices, are responsible for implementing the program at the local level, with the support of their supervising librarians and library directors.

The Family Place Libraries ™ initiative promotes a national model for transforming public libraries into welcoming, developmentally appropriate early learning environments for very young children, their parents and caregivers. Based on research about the importance of early brain development, the Family Place Library supports the essential role of parents as first teachers and addresses the physical, social, emotional and cognitive aspects of child development to help build a foundation for learning during the critical first years of life. By partnering and working with other social, health and educational services providers, the Family Place model aims to ensure that all children enter school ready and able to learn and positions libraries as key early childhood and family support organizations within the local community.

The Training Institute is conducted three or four times annually. Most of the trainings are held at the Middle Country Public Library in Centereach and Selden (NY) during the fall and spring months. A training site is also available at the Carson Branch of the County of Los Angeles Public Library. See the network website for the most current information.