Around six years ago, struggling with failing health and a failing marriage, Rebecca Montalvan found herself in need of assistance raising her three children, then ranging from 2 to 6 years old.

“I wasn’t able to pay the electric bill or get rent money together,” she said. “My children needed food.”

She went to a food pantry at a local church and was discouraged by the reception she received.

“The woman there was very condescending and mean to me,” she said. “She was slamming papers around like she was having a really bad day and I was her target.”

Things quickly turned around when she enrolled in the Butler County Success Program, which provides social services to low-income families through the Butler County Educational Service Center, available to families in six Butler County school districts including Fairfield City, Hamilton City, Lakota Local, Madison Local, Middletown Local and Monroe Local.

“The mission of Butler County Success is to remove non-cognitive barriers to learning by building bridges between home, school and community to improve school success and self-reliance,” said program supervisor Cari Wynne.

Since Montalvan signed on with the program, she has been set up with two different liaisons who have helped her and her family on a number of issues, from finding a more amenable food pantry to finding counselors to help her children cope with the turmoil in their lives. They even helped her find new furniture after her apartment flooded from drainage issues that filled her living room with sewage.

Although she has remarried since then, her health problems continue to plague her. In addition to previous diagnoses of fibromyalgia and diabetes, another health scare last summer added myasthenia gravis, an autoimmune neuromuscular disease that has limited her mobility and endurance.

“I walked into the hospital on my own, and 22 days later came out on a walker,” she said.

In the meantime, school had started and she had neither the money nor the resources to get clothes for her children. Her liaison, Gina Stitsinger, made sure that the children had meals — many of them pre-made to take some of the pressure off of Montalvan’s husband — helped get some counseling for her children who were afraid and worried about their mother’s health and came up with a box of clothing for each child, including new shoes.

“It was amazing,” she said.

About 70 percent of the Success program budget, just over $1 million annually, is provided from federal Temporary Aid for Needy Families dollars, distributed by the Butler County Commissioners through Butler County Job and Family Services. The Middletown Community Foundation and participating school districts make up the balance.

There are 15 liaisons working in 37 school buildings, Wynne said.

“We served over 1,200 students last year and expect that number to increase this year,” she said.

“Families who are at the 200 percent of the poverty guideline or lower are eligible to participate in the Success Program and can be referred by a variety of sources including school staff and parent self-referrals,” Wynne said.

The Success Program partners with numerous social service agencies and faith-based organizations, helping to meet the needs of families in a more comprehensive manner, she said.

“One of the most impactful components of the program is helping children and their families who don’t have enough food to get through the week,” she said. “Collaboration with Shared Harvest Food Bank allows children in the region to be supplied with food to help supplement their resources and ensure children are eating over the weekends.

“Evaluation of the Success program by Miami University over the past several years has consistently shown that the program is meeting the needs of families and that students enrolled in the program are improving academically,” Wynne said.