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Indian River County Healthy Start Coalition, Inc. Healthy Families IRC Program Children 's Services Advisory Committee Grant 2007-08 C. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION (Entire Section C, 1 — 6, not to exceed two pages) 1 . List Priority Needs area addressed. Parental support and education. Targets high risk pregnant women and new mothers including teens. Education increases positive parent/child interaction, outcomes, literacy, and employment. 2. Briefly describe program activities including location of services. HF Florida and the Florida Department of Health developed a Universal Prenatal Screen that assesses risk for both Healthy Families and Healthy Start programs. HF—IRC receives screens of at risk families from the Healthy Start program office and makes contact with all pregnant mothers who have a positive screen. Once a positive screen is received, a face-to-face two-hour comprehensive assessment is made to determine if she is eligible for HF IRC services. Services can be initiated two weeks before or after birth of the target child. Healthy Families is a voluntary, intensive home visitation program that occurs on a weekly basis . Caseloads are designed to be kept to fewer than 25 families to ensure the intensity of weekly home visitation is both manageable and effective . Intensity and frequency decrease over time as a result of the parents ' achievement of goals. Services take place in the home. Family Support Workers (FSW) are highly trained and supervised paraprofessionals who teach parents to interact in a positive manner by modeling appropriate behavior. Curriculum and services focus on parent/child bonding, infant/child growth and development, well baby care and immunization compliance. Families are empowered to set and achieve goals including employment. Born to Read Books and literature is provided. Literacy and reading to children is stressed. Families graduate after achieving goals. The average time it takes to graduate from the program is three years. 3. Briefly describe how your program addresses the stated need/problem. Describe how your program follows a recognized "best practice" (see definition on page 12 of the Instructions) and provide evidence that indicates proposed strategies are effective with target population. HF works with families at risk for child abuse by addressing and modeling parenting behavior that will improve parentichild interactions. Education increases positive outcomes, parent and child literacy, and stresses achieving employment. .The HF program is modeled after the highly successful national HF America; an initiative that is based on critical program elements that have been defined by over 20 years of research and represent best practices in home visitation. HF Florida, which is the state-based administrator of all HF programs, contracted with a research and evaluation firm to conduct overall program evaluation. In a report presented in April 2002, it found that 98% of all children who participated in HF had no finding of child maltreatment or substantiated child abuse . The national HF initiative has many years of research and has demonstrated the success of the Healthy Families' model as an effective means of promoting positive family functioning and preventing child maltreatment. 4. List staffing needed for your program, including required experience and estimated hours per week in program for each staff member and/or volunteers (this section should conform to the information in the Position Listing on the Budget Narrative Worksheet). ( 1 Full Time Equivalent - FTE) - Masters degree in social work, psychology, or a related field (or BA with 2 additional years of experience in the field), and/or 2 years experience in direct service delivery and supervision. The primary role is to provide leadership, direction and overall program supervision for all HF IRC staff. Supervisors ( 1 . 5 FTE' s) - Masters degree in social 5