TLC - True Lasting Connections
by Lorine Parks
What service is most requested by needy school children in Downey? Is it food, shoes, eye glasses?
The answer, according to Luz Perez of TLC, is counseling.
TLC stands for True Lasting Connections and is now part of the Downey Unified School District, creating a link between the City of Downey and the families of the DUSD. The goal is to ensure healthy and successful futures for all our children.
As an example of great intercommunity-school partnership, TLC often refers a child to one of the ancillary organizations, such as PTA Helps, which can provide clothes and food for the table.
TLC is plugged into social services which connect with medical and dental care and mental health issues. Typical requests, as outlined for us by Roger Brossmer, Assistant Supervisor for the DUSD, and Joe Mogan, president of the Downey Education Association, the teacher’s union, started off routinely. They began by reading from typical cases asking for eyeglasses, and then food for a family shuttling between a hotel room and grandmother’s house.
Then the calls for counseling came, from the littlest school children. From Angelina’s grandmother: Angelina’s parents were killed in an automobile accident and her grandmothers needed help in managing the child. Then a call from a teacher at Rio San Gabriel to help a little girl who came to school unkempt, disoriented on campus and needing presentable clothes. Her single father needed counseling. Then another teacher noted there was a restraining order against the parents for one child who had been abused. The child needed anger management classes.
Then from Rio Hondo came the request for a second grader, who was subject to physical and verbal abuse at home: she had tried suicide. The teacher was requesting counseling for the child.
“If we didn’t have TLC, what would happen to these referrals,” Roger asked. In the past year, there have been 2,000 requests for counseling. To put that in perspective, that represents 2,000 children of the 23,000 children in the DUSD.
Luz told us that she had been in this field for 25 years. A graduate of the former St. Pius X High School on Gardendale Street in Downey, she had wanted to go into teaching. But because she is bilingual in Spanish and English, she was asked to translate to explain some of the home situations. What she saw made her change her major from education and go into social work.
Our club’s donations “made the difference for TLC this past December,” Luz said, and she wanted to thank us. 138 families were recommended for TLC’s help over the holidays, and “we could not have made it through Christmas without you.”
An important fund raiser for TLC is the annual 5K and Family Fun Run. This year the event will be held at Apollo Park, on Saturday February 25, starting at 8 am. “Event will be held rain or shine,” the brochure says. “Strollers are welcome, water stations throughout the route, and no refunds.” There will be awards for many overall male and female age divisions, from 5-10 up to 60+.
Registration is $20 youth and $30 adult, which includes a customized race bib, goodie bag and division winner medals. Sponsorship opportunities are also open and Landmark Sponsorship Signs. For more information, phone (562) 904-3577, or go to www.dusd.net/tlc.
TLC relies heavily on community support, fundraisers and grants. In addition to our club’s collecting toiletries and clothes quarterly for them, President Russell told Luz that we will be presenting her a club donation.