On September 26th, 2024, Catalyst partnered with the Utah Banker’s Association to facilitate a volunteer event at the Community Reinvestment Act Conference in Draper, Utah. The volunteer event centered around support for the Utah Youth Village, one of Utah’s largest nonprofits, which serves thousands of individuals per year in therapeutic foster homes, in-home services and a fully-accredited therapeutic boarding school, as well as through mentoring and intensive online parenting resources. One of the nonprofit’s key programs is “Families First,” a premier, evidence-based in-home program designed to teach parents and children skills to improve family functioning. The program seeks to promote child safety, child permanency, child well-being and adult well-being.

At the event, Catalyst facilitated the compilation of 100 “game kits” for Family First Specialists, who work with families to build skills through teaching, modeling and role-playing. The kits Catalyst and UBA participants assembled will be brought to in-home visits and used to facilitate play-based approaches to developing and refining skills to improve family cohesion. Such skills include effective communication, accountability, social intelligence and decision-making, expressing feelings, coping with frustrations, and ways to set and maintain boundaries.