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Organization : Indian River County Healthy Start Coalition, Inc. Program: Healthy Families — IRC Funder: IRC Board of County Commissioners — Children 's Services Advisory Committee - 05-06 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 home of the pregnant mom. Healthy Families is a voluntary, intensive home visitation program that occurs on a weekly basis . Family Support Workers (FSW), who are trained paraprofessionals, provide case-management services focusing on parent/child bonding and infant/child growth and development, ensure well baby care and immunization schedule compliance, and support the family by empowering them to set and achieve goals . Family caseloads for the FSW ' s are designed to be kept to fewer than 25 families, to ensure that the intensity of the home- based services are manageable . H caninitiate 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 and the screens dramatically improve the referral process . HF—IRC receives the screens from the HS Care Coordination office and makes contact with all pregnant mothers who had an initial positive screen for HE Once the positive HF screen is received the FAW conducts a face-to-face two-hour comprehensive assessment to determine if she would be eligible for HF services . HF-IRC encourages and helps families become employed as a number of the families are unemployed. One hundred percent of the families being served have conformed to their well child/EPSTD standards (which includes immunizations), with a significant majority of the families surveyed showing overall satisfaction with services . 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 focuses on families with risk factors for child abuse by 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. HF Florida, which is the state-based administrator of all HF programs, contracted with a research and evaluation firm to do 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 that home based case management, parenting education and child development has been the most effective means for addressing parent support and education as well as mental health and wellness . 6