URBANA, Ill. – The Family Resiliency Center (FRC) at the University of Illinois celebrated the launch of a new strategic plan with a reception for friends and associates in February.

The FRC is dedicated to conducting research and providing resources to address major problems facing families and communities. The center is housed in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences.

“Our strategic plan outlines the goals, strategies, and action plan to guide the next phase of growth at the FRC through 2028. The center continues to expand and move in new directions, with different approaches and content areas, including prioritizing collaboration with community partners,”  says FRC Director Jacinda Dariotis.

Five intersecting hubs comprise the center’s research framework.

“The first hub is family, child, youth, and community health; the second hub is risk, resilience, and thriving, where we’ll look at risk as an opportunity for growth and development. The third hub is arousal and regulation–viewing arousal as a motivator to be leveraged into helpful coping strategies. The fourth hub is mindfulness and wellbeing, which is about intentionality and being in the present moment. The final hub is evidence-based research, ensuring our work is grounded in best practices and translated into real-world applications,” Dariotis explains.

FRC’s strategic goals include diversification of the research portfolio, establishing a transdisciplinary participatory culture and engaging collaborators in the community.

“We’re expanding our partnerships to community partners and other institutions who can affiliate with us. Research has traditionally been done with little to no input from participants, but we are actually engaging community partners as co-researchers. We are also training them and building capacity so they can eventually do the work themselves,” Dariotis says. “It's going to take everyone to solve these wicked problems that we're experiencing in this world. There are ways to do it together that really harness everyone's strengths and expertise.”

The FRC website provides resources that offer practical solutions to common family and household problems, including Building Blocks of Resilience and Mealtime Minutes. The center is affiliated with the Autism Program, which provides resources for children on the autism spectrum and their families.

Learn more about partnering with FRC here.