“When nearly 75 percent of employees leave the county every day to go to work, it is unsurprising that parents have come to rely on schools to provide supervision and care to their children and youth. As Lake County schools adopted a hybrid model of remote and in-person learning due to COVID-19, parents, many of whom were immigrants and essential workers, were faced with the impossible choice of maintaining employment or staying home to care for their children.

Full Circle Lake County, in close partnership with the school district, decided to work together to ensure that every student would have a place to go, filling the gap in care, services, and supervision and giving parents peace of mind while they continued to work. With previous experience in providing out-of-school programming to up to 150 children for a few hours a day after school, Full Circle was able to quickly pivot and offer full-day programming for hundreds of students.

This made it possible for parents to maintain their work schedules while children in grades K-12 were cared for in a safe environment. Full Circle provided social, emotional, and enrichment programs and the school offered academic supports. Stephanie Cole, Executive Director of Full Circle of Lake County attributes the success of the program to high levels of collaboration and collective impact, “You could see it and feel it every day,” she reflected.”