Rural Families
You are in the Rural Families section of the Casey Foundation Knowledge Center, which offers resources that are either published or funded by the Casey Foundation. Resources include data on families living in rural areas and strategies to promote their economic success.
See also Our Work: Rural Families, an overview of Casey's investment in this issue.
Featured Publications
15. Pathways to Juvenile Justice Reform: Detention Reform in Rural Areas
2008
This report details a variety of special techniques, tactics, and strategies that can help rural areas accomplish detention reform effectively. The report highlights the importance in focusing on rural detention reform; five principles to guide detention reform in rural areas; unique characteristics of rural communities and rural youth; the particular issues that may make rural detention reform more difficult; profiles of two promising rural detention reform efforts (in Illinois and Oregon); lessons learned from implementing detention reform effectively in rural areas and ways in which rural counties can boost their detention reform efforts; and a summary of key lessons, paying special attention to the critical role of leadership in detention reform efforts in rural regions.
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View the Pathways to Juvenile Detention Reform Series >>
Rural Family Economic Success Overview
2006
Despite working hard, far too many low-income parents in rural communities find severe obstacles in their path toward financial stability and success. This brochure presents a framework for increasing their economic success by helping them increase income, stabilize financial lives, acquire assets and build wealth. This framework is based on the Foundation’s overall Family Economic Success agenda, adapted to reflect circumstances and conditions found in rural America.
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View the Rural Family Economic Success Practice Briefs Series >>
Diversifying the Economy to Create Jobs and Help Families Prosper in South Dakota
2008
Facing the common rural challenges of outmigration and a dying agricultural-based economy, the residents of Howard, South Dakota and the surrounding county looked to the economic engines of the future to create employment opportunities and increase income. From developing wind energy-related businesses to organic beef production, Miner County has re-energized its citizens, revitalized its economy, and recaptured some former community members.
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Using Local Creativity and Entrepreneurship to Build Family-Supporting Jobs in North Carolina
2008
Residents of the Appalachian region of western North Carolina are redeveloping their economy by building on their age-old tradition of crafts and using it as a springboard to also expand their agricultural and tourism industries. An Asheville nonprofit, Handmade in America, is providing support, inspiration and know-how to help the region build on its strengths.
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Strengthening Rural Families: Expanding College and Job-Skills Opportunities in Western Maine
2008
In Franklin County, Maine, a group of local leaders has brought community college classes and jobs skills training to their area, giving residents new opportunities to qualify for good jobs and higher expectations for their futures. It is also providing employers—and prospective employers—with a new supply of well-educated workers.
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RuFES Roundup Newsletter
2007
Across rural America, community leaders and policy makers are working hard to help hard-working rural families get ahead. The RuFES Round-Up newsletter offers these innovators good data, action ideas, and real-life stories – as information, inspiration and motivation – to spark their efforts to advance Rural Family Economic Success (RuFES). The newsletter is distributed by email to alumni of RuFES Action-Learning Institutes and Site Visits. The newsletter also is posted at the Community Strategies Group area of the Aspen Institute’s website.
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Affordable Car Ownership Programs: Transporting Families Toward Financial Stability and Success
2007
This article looks at innovative programs that are helping rural low-income families to acquire affordable, reliable transportation as a strategy to stabilize or improve their employment situation. The need for a car is particularly critical in rural areas, where there usually are no public transportation options, and jobs and fair-priced goods and services are far away. The brief describes a variety of car program approaches and how they help to build family economic success in rural communities.
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View the Rural Family Economic Success Practice Briefs Series >>