PREVENTION PILOTS

 

Almost every new family can use support.  At Prevent Child Abuse America, we work to provide families with the help they need to build healthy parent-child relationships.  In an effort to provide innovative and effective methods of service, we focus on demonstration projects as a means of exploring ways to help specific communities. 

One of our most promising new initiatives is First Steps.  It is a family support and primary prevention program of the Georgia Council on Child Abuse, Inc. that uses trained volunteers to offer educational information, emotional support, and referrals to expectant and new parents.  These services are provided through a friendly visit at a hospital or health clinic. 

Goals of the First Steps Program include personal support for new families; reinforcement of skills and strengths needed for quality parenting; facilitation of emotional preparation for parenthood; increased awareness of community resources; reduction of isolation felt by new families; and identification and support of families with potential risks for problem parenting with early referral services. 

Unique features of the program include early contact through telephone and home visits for a minimum of three to six months with the family, and distribution of the First Steps Developmental Calendar, Parent Book, resource guide, and referrals to community services to parents. To better aid families with greater needs, we link them to appropriate local services for additional help.  
In 1997, First Steps quickly expanded nationwide and gained international recognition at military sites.  The program continues to grow and increase when it is  combined with HFA. Grant funding from the Aetna Foundation, Inc. to Prevent Child Abuse America and the Georgia Council on Child Abuse, Inc. allowed the expansion of First Steps efforts to five HFA sites.  They include Le Bonheur Center for Children in Crisis, Memphis, TN; Jacksonville Children’s Commission, Jacksonville, FL; Ready, Set, Go, Bend, OR; Healthy Families Walworth County, Elkhorn, WI; and Family Enhancement Center, Plains, PA. 

Other innovative projects include a demonstration project established in the states of Oklahoma, Nevada, and Wisconsin. Through funding from the Kellogg Foundation, a collaborative effort between Prevent Child Abuse America and the Cooperative States Research Education and Extension Service (CSREES) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture was created.  The goal was to demonstrate the feasibility of building HFA upon the Extension service delivery system, and ultimately expanding HFA activities statewide.   

We established a Kellogg Team at Prevent Child Abuse America to assist each site in meeting their goals and objectives for the project. Together with Extension, we designed programs with the flexibility to fit the specific needs of communities, and with the high quality demanded by our own practice standards. These standards are specified by the HFA critical elements in the credentialing system. 

Last year, the Kellogg Team reviewed the goals and objectives for each program site, and provided technical assistance as appropriate. They also arranged a series of conference calls on topics identified by the sites as areas of concern, which included focus on credentialing, collaborative partnerships, and in-state training capacity. Currently, a process and outcome evaluation is in progress to examine program impacts and partnership. 

As we continue to work with Extension, we find that the knowledge we are gaining from these demonstration sites provide invaluable tools for our child abuse prevention activities.  Every piece of new information we learn is being used to build toward our goal of expanding HFA services.  Through HFA, we will be able to bring help that is geared to the specific needs of families across the country.