HFA
Healthy Families America
Children's Charter is the designated state leader for HEALTHY
FAMILIES AMERICA (HFA) work in Michigan. HFA is a national
initiative that helps parents of newborns get their children off to
a healthy start. The initiative promotes positive parenting and
child health and development, thereby preventing child abuse,
neglect and other poor childhood outcomes.
HFA supports home visiting and other services to families in some
300 communities, including dozens in Michigan. Participation is
strictly voluntary; approximately 90% of parents offered these
services choose to participate.
In our role as HFA leader, Children’s Charter assists
communities (over 30 in the past few years) that are developing programs to serve new families. We provide technical assistance to existing programs that are
striving to increase the capacity, and quality, of their home
visitor services. Training
of new home visitors is also a priority; low-cost family support
worker trainings are offered on a regular basis for new staff (over
700 workers were trained in the past two years.)
Children's
Charter has been a leader in legislative advocacy for flexible
funding at the community level to serve families with young
children. $5.3 million is now being provided through
appropriations from the Family Independence Agency, the
Department of Community Health, and the Department of Education for
secondary prevention programs in communities throughout Michigan.
We are working to grow this fund to $10 million through our efforts
with the Zero to Five Advocacy Network
Click here to visit the
Prevent Child Abuse (PCA) America
web site.
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