I have had the honor to work and intern at Redlands Family Services this semester. Redlands family services have many different services it offers to its clients. It is not a homeless shelter, but is a foundation like service to help teach at risk and low-income families life skills. They offer food support, rent support, bus passes, motel vouchers, clothing, as well as many different classes to help them build different skills. During my twenty hours of working I had the opportunity to work in different areas of service. From the clothing room, to different food options I was moving around every week.

The clothing room is somewhere where each family that is a client is allowed to go every two weeks for age appropriate clothing for their family. They are allowed five items per family member as well as are able to browse for twenty minutes if they have a family of four and an additional five minutes per each family member that exceeds four. This room was organized as best as possible, but with the excess amount of donations they receive and the few volunteers that work in this area it is difficult to keep everything in an orderly manner.

Redlands family service has many different food options they offer mostly to its clients and one option that is for anyone in the community. The option that anyone in the community is allowed to use is the hot breakfast and dinner option. This is offered Monday through Friday for breakfast and Monday through Thursday for dinner. Although not very many people off of the streets that are not clients do attend they are allowed to, which is the only area of Redlands family services that they will not turn you away if you are not a registered client.

Food emergency kits are a little different and it offers clients food to feed their family for seven days, three meals each day. This is typically given to new clients or clients in a crisis situation. This is not a service all clients have access to and the clients that do have access do not have it regularly. On the other hand food surplus is available for clients each and every day. This consists of food items that are reaching close to the expiration date.

All in all I think Redlands Family Services is doing great things for the community. I think on the side of managing volunteers they are extremely unorganized and I feel this is due to them being understaffed. I like their philosophy that they are there to help build these peoples skills and not to enable them to stay in the same situation they arrived in, but they want the to grow as people and as a family each day.