Please Welcome TFP’s New Family Resource Center
In 2021, TFP made a commitment to this neighborhood by opening our new building: to be a genuine community anchor and partner. Like many organizations, the years that followed required us to focus on keeping core services running. We never lost sight of the broader vision, and now is the time to act on it.
When Hennepin County set out to bring a Family Resource Center to South Minneapolis, The Family Partnership said yes. Yes to opening our doors. Yes to being the place where this work takes root. Yes to our neighbors and neighborhood.
“So many organizations have spent the last several years focused on staying open, staying funded, doing the things,” says Emily Larson, TFP’s President and CEO. “The Family Resource Center is a chance to ask a different question: how do we do our work better—with each other, and with the community we’re all here to serve?”
“The Family Resource Center is a chance to ask a different question: how do we do our work better with each other, and with the community we’re all here to serve?”
– Emily Larson, President and CEO
South Minneapolis has endured a great deal in recent years. The murder of George Floyd. The surge of ICE raids and violence. Federal funding cuts. Sustained economic pressure on families already managing a lot.
Through it all, one thing has remained consistent: families here are not struggling because they aren’t trying.
“I don’t want to walk into a place and feel like a case,” one community member shared during a needs assessment organized by Hennepin County. “I want to feel like a person. A whole person.”
The FRC exists to do things differently. Built around the evidence base for early intervention and coordinated support, it is designed to be a place families can walk into and find answers to many of their questions during a single visit.
South Minneapolis Families Helped Design This Resource Center
Plans for the FRC started with listening.
In 2025, Hennepin County organized a community needs assessment. The process involved real conversations with South Minneapolis families about what was missing and what would help. Notably, service gaps weren’t the biggest issue—by far. Many families described avoiding the very systems designed to support them, out of fear that asking for help would be used against them.
“We don’t ask for help unless it’s life or death,” one caregiver shared. “Even then, we think twice.”
Families across cultural communities described how they withheld disclosures and opted out of services for self-protection. They described being over-monitored and under-supported. They described seeking help and being treated with suspicion.
What they asked for was different: a place to come as they are. To be seen as whole people, as experts in their own lives, as parents who love their kids and deserve support without fear.
“Just let us come in and be people,” said another community member. “Not cases. Not numbers.”
“Just let us come in and be people,” said another community member. “Not cases. Not numbers.”
– Community Member, Hennepin County
The FRC’s design is a direct response to that ask. A community advisory structure ensures families continue to have a voice in how the center operates.
Multilingual Family Services, No Appointment Needed, at E. Lake Street
The goals of the Family Resource Center affirm TFP’s two-generation approach: when adults in a family are supported, children thrive. Now families can walk into our building and connect with navigators who have deep roots in Minneapolis and training in trauma-informed care.
- Location: 1527 E. Lake Street, Minneapolis, MN 55407
- Hours: 10am to 4pm, Monday through Thursday
Meeting with a navigator is free and no appointment is needed.
Services are available in English, Somali, and Arabic, with translation and language line assistance for additional languages. Staff will always tell families upfront what they can and can’t keep private, so families know what to expect.
The partner organizations coming together here each bring strong, trusted relationships with South Minneapolis families. Together under one roof, families don’t have to start over every time they need something different.
Partnering organizations for the South Minneapolis FRC include:
- Bridge for Youth
- CLUES
- Greater Minneapolis Crisis Nursery
- Isuroon
- MADDADs
- St. David’s Center
- Tubman
- The Family Partnership
Available supports include:
- Housing navigation and eviction prevention
- Mental health support
- Employment and financial coaching
- Early childhood resources
- Legal aid
- Basic needs and emergency funds
- Cultural programming
Meet the Coordinator Behind the Family Resource Center
Leading the launch is Vikki Reich, TFP’s FRC Coordinator, whose background spans direct social services and organizational communications, a combination made for this kind of work.
Vikki knows this work from the inside. She has worked in youth residential treatment, group homes, and Adult Protection at Hennepin County. She holds a master’s degree in psychology and counseling. And she spent eight years at TFP helping tell the story of why this work matters.
Vikki also knows this neighborhood. She lived in South Minneapolis for nearly 30 years, raising her children here and seeing how this community absorbs one crisis after another with resilience that doesn’t always make the news.
“After everything this neighborhood has been through, I think there’s a real yearning for people to connect, to look out for each other, and to meet each other’s needs in very practical ways,” says Reich. “This community gets a bad rap. But I raised my kids here. I know what it actually is. And the FRC being right here, at Bloomington and Lake, feels exactly right.”
She came back to help make more of it possible. And every week, families are beginning to walk into our building and find many doors open to them.
Join Us for the Grand Opening on June 10th
The Family Resource Center soft-opened on April 13th. Now it’s time to celebrate, and we want you there!
The FRC’s grand opening is your chance to meet the navigators, see the space, and witness firsthand what your investment in The Family Partnership has helped make possible. Come see what it looks like when a community designs its own support system.
If you’ve supported The Family Partnership, you’ve been part of this commitment all along. Come see what that investment has made possible. And bring someone who should know this work is happening.
The South Minneapolis Family Resource Center is located at 1527 E. Lake Street inside The Family Partnership’s building. Funding is provided by Hennepin County through the Department of Children, Youth and Families and the Sauer Family Foundation. Outcomes research is conducted in partnership with the Wilder Foundation.
Let’s talk!
If you have any questions about the South Minneapolis Family Resource Center, please contact us today.
Vikki Reich
Family Resource Center Coordinator
Direct: 612.599.2392
Email: VReich@thefamilypartnership.org