The Administration for Children’s Services detailed the city’s approach to scaling Family Enrichment Centers as the program expands to roughly 29–30 sites citywide, saying the model emphasizes community co‑design, a small core staff at each site, and monthly reporting to measure offerings and attendance.

ACS staff said each FEC is required to have a full‑time director, at least one (and up to two) community liaisons, at least one (and up to two) family advocates, a part‑time quality‑assurance/continuous‑improvement staff person, and a supervisor reporting line from the provider agency. The agency said the baseline annual budget had been $550,000 per site; an additional $100,000 was added during the first year of launch for startup costs (site construction, furniture and design). With recent city pay adjustments, ACS reported the average FY26 FEC budget rose to about $595,000 to cover rent, staff salaries and fringe and OTPS (other than personal services) expenses.

Marcus, an ACS program manager who oversees the offering logs, described the primary monitoring tool. “We have a report called an offering log,” he told the council, which documents each offering’s date, intended protective factor(s), who planned or co‑designed it (advisory‑council member, community participant or partner) and the approximate number of attendees. ACS reported that since January 2025 roughly 3,700 offerings occurred across its 29 centers, with an average of about 35 family and community members attending each offering. The agency said about 16% of offerings were designed with advisory councils, 56% with community members outside advisory councils and 41% with community partners.

ACS staff said evaluation and fidelity monitoring are staged to the expansion. “We are really focused on making sure we are implementing towards fidelity,” Liz of the ACS FEC team told the committee, referencing a 2019 evaluation of the original pilots. Staff said they are building continuous learning practices, testing tools to collect standardized site data and using coaching visits and monthly logs to both support individual sites and surface system‑level lessons.

Council members pressed ACS on outcome metrics beyond attendance and satisfaction. ACS said the offering logs are being used both to chart participation and to guide coaching conversations; rigorous outcome evaluation across the expansion will be pursued after more sites reach stable implementation. The agency repeatedly emphasized that FEC participation is voluntary and that “success” is measured first by families choosing to spend time at a center and then returning.

Directors and community providers who testified at the hearing described the work of co‑designing offerings, delivering concrete supports (clothing closets set up like boutiques, food distributions, microgrants and workforce‑linked workshops) and the challenge of meeting high demand on relatively modest contract budgets.

Looking ahead, ACS said it is focused on getting the current cohort fully launched and stable before proposing further expansion. The council and providers asked the agency to baseline additional funding to sustain programs once philanthropic start‑up grants end and to consider more robust evaluation funding to document impacts beyond participation numbers.