What is the project?
Home Visits Assure New Parents Success
Fact #1: The home is the first and most important learning environment for children. Fact #2: Parents are their child's first and most influential teacher.
A little extra help is often needed, however.
Rebekah and David were first-time parents when they sought help from First Steps, a community program that links parents to free services and resources in the greater Mankato area and provides home visiting to parents from prenatal stages through to age three.
Dylan, their happy, inquisitive 8-month old, played with a large rubber ball on the floor as they explained what the program has meant to them:
"We didn't know exactly what to expect. Liz (home visitor) shows us the stages he should be progressing through, like picking up and stacking blocks, or what nutrition is best for him."
Regular visits by Liz have helped make them successful parents, despite housing and financial concerns, Rebekah said.
"Some people say you can't do it all-David's a great dad; he's going to school fulltime and working fulltime. With help from United Way and the home visitors, I know we'll make it."
This story demonstrates why SMIF is supporting home visiting programs throughout the 20-county region. Research shows that home visits by an early childhood professional is an effective and cost-efficient way to ensure that children grow up healthy and ready to learn.
Funded by SMIF's Youth Trust Fund (YTF) and spearheaded through SMIF's Early Childhood Initiative (ECI), more than $50,000 is awarded annually for home visitation programs.
A comprehensive referral system for family support programs and home visiting programs in the Greater Mankato Area, the First Steps program is a streamlined process that works to ensure that families entering the system of support prenatally (with RN's) can continue throughout the early childhood years (with Parent Educators) as needed.
First Steps, a recipient of two home visitation grants totaling $54,200, promotes in-home, one-on-one education to at-risk families, from early pregnancy through the child's third birthday. The funding has also helped provide Growing Great Kids™ trainings, a research-based, user friendly and comprehensive approach to parent-child relationships and healthy childhood development to home visitors.
SMIF's funding also helped the Greater Mankato Area United Way increase capacity of the First Steps parent educators and nurses by adding an outreach coordinator. The outreach coordinator handles many of the administrative tasks, enabling home visiting staff to serve each family, and increasing their capacity to serve more families.
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