Lutheran Family Services

What is the organization’s mission?
The goal is to empower clients. To teach them how to control their own lives and to be self-sufficient.

How many full time staff and part time staff do you have?
Fulltime-13 parttime-9 interpreters-10-15

What are their roles?
Programs such as Group homes, Americorp, job placement, Case Management, immigration services, and donation center

Does each person have a workspace?
Partt-timers share spaces and fulltime have their own space. There are some shared offices such as the case management office.

Are there employees who do not require workspace?
Yes-preschool teacher and assistant

Do you have volunteers?
Yes-10-20 for English Learning Services
Case management has 1-2
Immigration has 1

Does your staff work in groups or independently?
There is a lot of independent work but they share info and partner up to help clients.

What makes your group work and meeting spaces effective or ineffective?
Weird room shapes that are hard to furnish, is ineffective. Effective use of space is having an area that enclosed to give privacy, and intake rooms have large windows and bright colors.

Are there offices or spaces that need to be near each other or shared?
They should be grouped by department and amount of privacy needed. Case management always shares office space, and immigration services are always private spaces. As well as providing private space for health management.

Are there staff members who need their own offices?
Immigration, health access, upper management

What is the number of the existing rooms in your facility and their functions?
22rooms-their uses are offices, conference, intake room, reception area, storage, prep room, kitchen, bath

What do you think are the best aspects of your facility and what do you think it lacks?
Best is the location close to the bus stop. Lack would be no cross walk from bus stop and not enough space.

If you were designing a new building what would you include in the new space that you don’t currently have?
Room for ESL classes, white boards in class and training rooms, tables for training, larger file room, private kitchen, and private bath, 1 large and 2 small conference rooms

Is community involvement one of your priorities?
Yes, co sponsorship and volunteers

What kind of environments have you found that foster interaction between people?
Having case managers facing each other, without partitions helps them communicate. Most of the conversation between refugees happens over coffee.

What are the absolute necessities for the facility?
Computers, Internet, government contracts, company intranet

What type of programs do you offer here?
Community partnership to send people to programs and to school, Some programs they send people to are emergency prep classes, job development, DSS intake

What is the buildings number one use?
Office Space, all of the classes are currently off site, it is easier to have the teachers go to the clients, and the classes grow so much that even if they had classrooms on site they would easily grow out of them,

If the building was adequate what new types of programs would you like to house here, a few class rooms would be nice, but for programs a family literacy program and a computer center for the refugees to learn software and to help teach them English and to keep in touch with their families.

Which of those needs do you think is of highest priority?
Computer lab would be number one because you could teach a literacy class on the computers.

What sort of furnishings and equipment is needed for all of the activities that go in the building?
Files, copy, cameras, phones, computers, color printers, fax, tv, radios, book cases, sofas, shelves, white boards,

What type of environment do you try to provide?
Comfortable

How do you feel you have achieved that in this space?
By hiring a wonderful staff.

What improvements would you make?
Glass doors, sufficient lighting, more natural light, no buzzing lights, more pictures, neutral tones in office, in take areas, bright accents in intake rooms,

In what was have you developed an environment to welcome visitors from different culture?
Authentic paint, show off to client’s donors and volunteers,
They have collages of clients, some people are turned off by the U.S. but some are turned off by their own countries. So a balance would be good.


A few notes:
Closes spaces are scary-floor length bathroom stalls are a bad idea, and closed doors
If you do need to have closed doors they should have glass panels
Windows are important and outside social areas
Intake rooms with bright colors
Breastfeeding areas in the women’s bathroom
Lots of counter space needed for putting together packets, desks aren’t big enough