Healthy Families Program
HEALTHY FAMILIES DALLAS is an innovative and unique child abuse prevention program that works with at-risk pregnant and parenting teens in high poverty neighborhoods in Dallas, beginning in pregnancy and continuing until the child’s fifth birthday. These young families live in some of the most troubled neighborhoods in our community, where crime and drugs are rampant and opportunities to escape poverty are few. Poverty and community violence create risks for children that often lead to poor outcomes, such as child abuse and neglect, inadequate medical care, and school failure. When the parent is a teenager who lacks the maturity and experience to know how to care for her baby, the risks are even higher.
Healthy Families Dallas helps teenaged parents by teaching them about their baby’s development and care, by promoting healthy parent-child relationships, and by linking with them with needed community resources.
The Healthy Families Dallas program is the only program in Dallas that offers services through the first five years of the child’s life, considered by child development experts to be the most important in social/emotional and cognitive development. By promoting positive parenting and child health and development, this strengths-based program decreases the risk factors for child abuse and neglect and helps parents raise happy, school-ready children.
CAP Center served over 58 teens, 41 adults and 73 children in 2007. Our youngest mother in the history of this program gave birth at age 12.
HEALTHY FAMILIES NEEDS STATEMENT
Recent studies show that Texas leads the nation in rates of teen pregnancies, and that Dallas has the highest rate of any city in Texas. This growing number of teen mothers is the most at-risk population for child abuse and neglect in our community.
Without proper support, teenaged pregnancy can be bad for both the mothers and their children. According to Child Trends and the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, some of the risks which are increased by a teen pregnancy are:
• Child abuse and neglect
• Poor fetal health
• Delayed or no prenatal care
• Risky prenatal behaviors, such as smoking
• Premature birth and medically complicated birth
• Postpartum depression
• Reduced likelihood of breastfeeding
• Lower quality relationship between mother and child
• Poor physical and mental health of the child
• Physical and cognitive delays in the child
• School failure of child
• Teen mother dropping out of school
• Reduced earning potential of mother
• Continuation of life in poverty
THE SOLUTION
Fortunately, teen parents and their babies have hope when they receive support and mentoring, such as that provided by the Healthy Families Dallas program.
The CAP Center’s Healthy Families program reduces the above risks through its proven, voluntary home visitation program. The program offers intensive, comprehensive, long-term, flexible and culturally appropriate support. Risks to the pregnant and parenting teens and their babies are decreased, at the same time that protective factors, such as a strong parent-child bond and improved access to medical care, are increased.
HEALTHY FAMILIES PROGRAM COMPONENTS
The Healthy Families program philosophy is based on the belief that the most practical and cost-effective focus of community services is prevention. The goal of the program is to identify and reach expectant teen parents who are in greatest need of parenting education; in this case, teen mothers living in poverty. The program is designed to help teen mothers form close, loving bonds with their babies, establish links with community support networks, promote self-reliance, and empower their families to manage adversity.
Trained Family Support Workers visit parents who enroll in the program in their own homes, beginning during the pregnancy, and teach them about their child’s development, encourage them to obtain immunizations and well-baby checkups, and screen the children for developmental delays. Parents learn activities that they can do with their children that not only support the child’s development, but promote a close relationship between the parent and child. The mentoring relationship with the Family Support Worker also gives the parent support in making positive choices in her own life, such as continuing her education and gaining skills to become independent and to enter the workforce. Support groups are also offered for the parents.
2007 PROGRAM GOALS
The purpose of the Healthy Families program is to prevent child abuse and neglect by teaching teen parents of newborns positive parenting techniques through in-home visitation and other services.
1. To support 48 – 55 families in the Healthy Families program annually.
2. To fully immunize all target children served by the program each year.
3. To maintain 75% of parents as either employed or in school each year.
4. To sustain validated CPS referrals as less then 5 per year.
CLOSING SUMMARY
The Dallas Healthy Families program is an innovative and unique child abuse prevention program that fills a gap in community services by meeting the needs of teen parents living in some of the most troubled neighborhoods in our community. The program empowers high-risk young parents to make positive choices for themselves and their children. The Dallas Healthy Families program is the only Dallas County program targeting this at-risk teen population and their children for the first five years of life. We welcome your support.