Family Support America / Family Resource Coalition was the national organization dedicated to the family resource and support movement. 

The brief history of the organization below is comprised of excerpts from The Role of Family Support in an Integrated Early Childhood System: Helping Families Get What They Need to Support Their Children’s Development, authored by Judy Langford and published by the Center for the Study of Social Policy in 2009:

"In 1981, a well known Chicago area program, Family Focus, received a small grant from the federal Administration on Children and Families to invite family resource programs around the country to meet together. More than 200 programs attended the first meeting and formed an official network, the Family Resource Coalition, as a vehicle of communication and networking among them. The Family Resource Coalition (renamed Family Resource Coalition of America in 1997 and later, Family Support America) served as the central clearinghouse of information, research dissemination, technical assistance and new ideas for the field over the next 25 years. ...

"After 2001, the shift in national attention toward terrorism and national security and away from innovations in social policy or education compounded the challenges of family support’s struggle to build the necessary infrastructure to become a distinctive field of practice. Public funding and foundation attention turned away from a focus on prevention and new ideas for supporting families, which in turn limited funding for research, evaluation and the continued expansion and improvement of practice. By 2006, Family Support America was forced to close because of a lack of funding for its operations and family support lost the national center for further development. Leadership in family support passed on to thriving state level initiatives and networks of programs, which continue to develop and use family support ideas and practices."

Premises of Family Support:

• Primary responsibility for the development and well-being of children lies within the family, and all segments of society must support families as they rear their children. 
• Assuring the well-being of all families is the cornerstone of a healthy society, and requires universal access to support programs and services. 
• Children and families exist as part of an ecological system.
• Child-rearing patterns are influenced by parents’ understandings of child development and of their children’s unique characteristics, parents' personal sense of competence, and cultural and community traditions and mores. 
• Enabling families to build on their own strengths and capacities promotes the healthy development of children. The developmental processes that make up parenthood and family life create needs that are unique at each stage in the life span. 
• Families are empowered when they have access to information and other resources and take action to improve the well-being of children, families, and communities.

Principles of Family Support Practice:

1. Staff and families work together in relationships based on equality and respect. 
2. Staff enhance families’ capacity to support the growth and development of all family members—adults, youth, and children. 
3. Families are resources to their own members, to other families, to programs, and to communities. 
4. Programs affirm and strengthen families’ cultural, racial, and linguistic identities and enhance their ability to function in a multi-cultural society. 
5. Programs are embedded in their communities and contribute to the community-building process. 
6. Programs advocate with families for services and systems that are fair, responsive, and accountable to the families served. 
7. Practitioners work with families to mobilize formal and informal resources to support family development. 
8. Programs are flexible and continually responsive to emerging family and community issues. 
9. Principles of family support are modeled in all program activities, including planning, governance, and administration.