Help for Families in Garden Grove : Program for city workers rightly stresses need for stable homes

The endangered family is much in the news, with threats from within and without. Garden Grove has an intriguing new employee benefit for city employees, a program to bolster the strength of families.

In addition to offering other benefits, this city is now acknowledging the importance of the family unit as the place from which employees come and to which they go at day’s end.

The result is a course available with the hope of strengthening family skills. This offering is being made through Family University, a program of books and tapes and other literature. It has the advantage of being voluntary and also the fact that it is not a new benefit being picked up by the taxpayers (employees may pay a fee through payroll deductions).

The need for better family skills in times of high stress and changing lifestyles is surely evident. Marie Knight, the manager of the city’s Community Services Department, observes that her city, like so many others in Orange County, has been wrestling with the problem of young people at risk. Mayor Bruce Broadwater says, “We recognize the importance of building strong, healthy families, whether it is with our own employees or within the community we serve.”

Councilman Mark Leyes, a supporter, was right initially to question whether such a program would involve the imposition of values. But he says he came to recognize that there is something to be said for a program that helps families with interpersonal skills.

The values espoused are simple enough: to treat family members with respect, to encourage them in their areas of strength, to encourage them to spend time together and to cultivate a sense of family. The city properly surmises that if these skills are developed in the home, it can make for a better city working environment. It can also mean that employees are better in their dealings with the public.

The city should monitor the program to make sure that the interests of employees are truly being served. If need be, it should be willing to consider alternatives so that it is not wedded irreversibly to one provider. There is little research to support the notion that family self-help programs work. But the idea has the benefit of making sense as worth trying.