Officials at the Public Library of Youngtown & Mahoning County are positioning the system’s Michael Kusalaba branch as a resource for young children and their families.
A Family Place Library is part of a national network of certified libraries that offer “a special suite of services and programs for expecting parents and new parents of young children,” including social and developmental support, as well as “an extended suite of learning opportunities for very young children,” including “very early literacy support,” said Aimee Fifarek, PLYMC director and CEO.
Family Place Libraries transform children’s services in a public library into an early childhood and parent support center, according to Kristen Todd-Wurm, national coordinator of Family Place Libraries, a foundation based in Centereach, N.Y. The libraries focus on “the whole child and the parent as the first teacher in a child’s life,” and emphasize the role of the children’s librarian as a link to community resources.
“Family Place is more than just a program – it’s a philosophy of service,” she continued in an email. “It involves the Parent Child Workshop, working in collaboration with other agencies and organizations, space development for very young children and their parents, outreach to the community, as well as specially designed collections and programs.”
The Kusalaba branch, which opened in 2019, became certified as a Family Place Library in late 2024, Fifarek said. This involved sending two PLYMC employees – Shelby Santullo, youth services librarian at Kusalaba, and Pam Brockway, public service manager – for training to prepare them to administer the program.
“The recent consolidation of Youngstown City Schools means that a lot of our very youngest students are going to be in the nearby area, so it’s ideal to capture those parents as they are getting ready to send their children to school, as well as the fact that there are a lot of young families in this area,” she said.
The Kusalaba branch, which serves Youngstown’s west side, is “uniquely positioned,” Molly Bevan, Kusalaba supervisor, affirmed.
“We have a very diverse community here. We have a lot of families. We have a lot of grandparents who are caregivers,” she said. The branch also serves a growing Hispanic community, including patrons who are learning to speak English and who come to the library to use its resources.
Also, resources for families on the West Side “are not as robust” as in other areas of Mahoning County, so bringing these kinds of special services to “support parents in their parenting journey is a good opportunity,” Fifarek said.
The library system recently launched its 2025 annual campaign, with donations directly supporting the Kusalaba branch’s transformation to a dedicated Family Place Library, “the first of its kind in the region,” according to a PLYMC news release.
Fifarek said the nearest FPLs are part of the Cuyahoga County Public Library systems. They visited Cuyahoga County FPLs while doing master plan research.
“Much of what we’re raising funds for are the things that parents and children are going to be interacting with directly – so things like manipulative furniture, child-size furniture, items for creative play, all of those things that not only need to be purchased, but repurchased as they get well loved throughout the program,” she said.
In addition, about $30,000 worth of physical improvements will be made to the building, she said. That will be for a combination of supporting the Family Place initiative, as well as changes to improve line of sight.
“We’re going to do a little bit of a reorganization to help give all the different constituencies who use our libraries their own specific space so there’s more room to play and grow,” she said.
“We are essentially going to flip the floor,” Bevan said. In addition to opening up sightlines, the objective also is to consolidate spaces and provide more playscapes for patrons.
“We’re looking to essentially just provide better points of service, better contact for our patrons in the building, provide more space for gathering together and community collaboration,” she added.
Being a certified FPL gives the library access to a series of short videos on topics from prenatal information and early literacy to toilet training and other things that first-time parents need to learn about when they’re expecting and raising their first young child, Fifarek said. A text-based service launching in December will provide additional resources and highlight new availability within the network, and also push out information about the targeted programming.
Construction activity related to the physical changes at Kusalaba ideally should get underway by year’s end and could last through 2026, Bevan said.
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