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Organization : Indian River County Healthy Start Coalition, Inc. Program: Healthy Families — IRC Program Funder: IRC Board of County Commissioners — Children 's Services Advisory Committee - 2004 Grant Application C. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION (Entire Section C, 1 — 6, not to exceed two pages) 1 . List Priority Needs area addressed. Parenting Support and Education & Mental Wellness 2 . Briefly describe program activities including location of services. The primary location of services takes place in the family' s home . Healthy Families is a voluntary, intensive home visiting program that occurs on a weekly basis . Family Support Workers (FSW) , who are trained paraprofessionals, provide case-management services focusing on parent/child bonding, infant/child growth and development, ensuring well baby care and immunization schedule compliance and support the family empowering them to set and achieve goals . Family caseloads for the FSW ' s are by design, kept to under 25 families, to ensure the intensity of the home-based services are manageable . HF can initiate services either prenatally or up to two weeks after the birth of the target child. HF Florida and the Florida Department of Health have collaborated to develop a Universal Prenatal Screen. The screen is offered to the pregnant woman on her first obstetric (OB) visit with her prenatal care provider. In Indian River County, during the spring of 2001 , a Screening Liaison position was provided by the IRCHS Coalition to Partner' s In Women ' s Health, (the primary OB provider for pregnant women who have Medicaid or are indigent) in order to better coordinate the screening process and ensure that the pregnant woman is referred to the program (HS or HF) that can best meet her needs based on the risk factors presented. The implementation of this Screening Liaison position has dramatically improved the referral process and has eliminated any duplication of services . HF—IRC receives the screens from the HS Care Coordination (HSCC) office and makes contact with all pregnant mothers who had a positive screen for HF. HF focuses on parenting education and services directly related to parent/child bonding and infant care and development. Once the positive HF screen is received, the HF-IRC Family Assessment Worker (FAW) contacts the HSCC office to determine the status of the pregnant woman and if she is being served by HS Care Coordination. The FAW conducts a face-to - face two-hour comprehensive assessment to determine if she would be eligible for HF services . If the pregnant woman is eligible after the assessment for HF and is not receiving HS services, then on-going HF services would begin. The majority of all HF referrals come from the HS screen prenatally. However, referrals can take place within two weeks after the birth of the infant. Postnatal referrals routinely come from the Indian River Memorial Hospital (IRMH) representatives after delivery. For the first time since the inception of the HF-IRC back in the summer of 1998, eight families "graduated" from the HF-IRC program in the summer of 2003 . Of these families, seven were employed and two have increased their level of education at the time of graduation. Of these eight participants, six were unemployed at the time of entering the HF-IRC program. One hundred percent of the families being served have conformed to their well child/EPSTD standards (which includes immunizations), with 100% of the families surveyed showing overall satisfaction with services . 3 . Briefly describe how your program intends to address the stated need/problem. Include reference to any studies or evidence that indicate proposed strategies are effective with target population. HF focuses on families with risk factors for child abuse addressing parenting components that will improve parent/child interactions and enhance overall brain development. The HF program is modeled after the highly successful national HF America 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. As mentioned earlier, only three reported child abuse cases for families receiving HF-IRC services have occurred since 1999 . HF Florida, which is the state-based administrator of the all HF programs , contracted with a research and evaluation firm to do overall 6