Adams&160;County will be putting families first this year thanks to a grant from the Mississippi Department of Human Services. The $100,000 grant provides funding for Adams&160;County to set up a Families First Resource Center at 323 Market St. in downtown Natchez.

&uot;(The center’s) primary purposes is to assist families, in all services available, to keep the family together – to keep the family strong,&uot; said Mary Jane Gaudet, grant writer and programs director at Adams County Youth Court.

The center will offer a variety of services including a library on family issues, family therapy, parenting classes, foster and adoptive parents support, tutoring, teen pregnancy prevention and child abuse prevention.

&uot;It will be a full service orientation to family needs,&uot; Gaudet said.

And all the services will be free and open to the public.

Adams County received the grant Jan. 12 to cover four months of services at the center.

In September, the county will be eligible for a second $100,000 grant to fund the program for an additional year.

After doing a extended study of the community, the Youth Court decided it needed to fight juvenile delinquency in Adams County by focusing on the family.

&uot;The number one problem is family mismanagement,&uot; Gaudet said.

The second problem is academic failure, she said.

One of the center’s goals will be to encourage children to think.

&uot;It’s not telling them what to do,&uot; Gaudet said. It’s a way to &uot;give them this great gift of being able to think and reason.&uot;

And, children who learn how to think grow into problem-solving adults, she added.

The center will also offer staff development programs to help teachers deal with discipline in their classrooms.

Gaudet said that through her work with Youth Court programs she has seen that teachers need these skills.

&uot;We have more kids coming in with anger management problems being referred from the schools,&uot; she said.

As the program develops, the Youth Court will continue to access the community to see what other programs are needed, Gaudet said.