About Healthy Start
The
Healthy Start mission is to strengthen young families
and promote health and success for their young children.
“I appreciated having support during a difficult time.
I appreciated adult advice, encouragement and having someone to talk to and
I feel I am a better mother and person after participating in the Healthy
Start program.” - A sixteen year old mother
Program
Overview
Young parents need extra guidance, support, and
education to raise healthy children. Babies born to teen mothers are more likely to
have insufficient health care, fall victim to abuse and neglect, and be
unprepared for kindergarten. Healthy Start is a voluntary, confidential and
free parenting education program that supports young parents through the
challenges before and after a newborn arrives and continues until the child
reaches the age of three. Healthy Start has served 2,628 families between
it’s inception and 12/31/10.
Our approach is to
strengthen and empower young parents as they learn to provide their babies
with a Healthy Start. Using family support principles, the program has
four components:
- Home visiting
- Group activities (support groups and recreational activities)
- Developmental and health screenings
- Referrals to community resources
Born to Learn™ Parents as
Teachers Program Model
Healthy Start uses the Born to Learn™ program model developed by Parents as Teachers which incorporates the most recent brain research on child development. Born to Learn™ is specifically designed to strengthen the social, emotional, cognitive, linguistic, and motor development of young children. It teaches parents how to interact with their child at every stage of early child development. Born to Learn™ is a model that has proven effective in helping children become developmentally “ready for school”.
There are currently 12 Family Support Specialists and 25 Parent Mentors
serving the needs of approximately 375 families by:
- Facilitating family goal setting & recording progress toward achievement
- Assisting in obtaining health care providers
- Modeling parenting skills & teaching child development
- Organizing peer support groups & recreational outings
- Ensuring follow through with immunizations and healthy baby check-ups
- Enhancing family relationships
- Securing education & employment opportunities
Collaboration
Healthy Start is a unique collaboration of these
five agencies:
- Friends of Youth (fiscal agent
and lead agency)
- Youth Eastside Services
- Northshore Youth & Family
Services
- The Center for Human Services
- Renton Area Youth and Family Services.
The member agencies share in the service delivery and have a defined geographical service area determined by school district boundaries.
The Parent Mentor Program trains and matches volunteer Parent Mentors with families throughout the entire service area.
Profile of Families Served in
2010
One or both parents must be age 22 or younger and parenting their first
child.
- Age of mother
- 67% are age
14 to 19
- 33% are age
20 to 22
- Primary language of mother
- 53% English
- 46% Spanish
- 1% Other
- Ancestral ethnicity of mother
- 51% Latina
- 35% Caucasian
- 4% African American
- 3% Asian
- 7% Mixed
Ethnicity
- 40% of mothers are enrolled in school or training
- 45% of mothers completed high school or GED
- 40% of mothers are employed full or part-time
- 43% of mothers are single parents
Effectiveness of Healthy Start
In 2010, Healthy Start helped 385 young families not
just cope, but thrive.
We track five outcomes to measure program effectiveness and the percentage
of families meeting these outcomes in 2010 was extremely high as shown
below.
Outcome |
% Meeting Outcome |
Indicators |
1) Increase healthy, effective parenting skills |
95% |
Parent engages in learning/strengthening parenting skills, develops confidence, and deals appropriately with personal stress. |
2) Strengthen nurturing and attachment behaviors |
96% |
Parent responds to child's physical cues, responds to emotional cues, makes eye contact, interacts during feeding, narrates to child, and talks to child in a warm manner. |
3) Reduce incidents of child abuse or neglect. |
98% |
Participant will have no CPS referral accepted for investigation. |
4) Promote family independence |
95% |
Parent will set goals and meet or make progress toward goals. |
5) Delay second births. |
92% |
Parent will delay the birth of a 2nd child for at least 24 months. |
The success of Healthy Start is further evidenced in
that only 2% of HS families were referred to CPS in 2010 compared to the
state average of 18% for this age group of parents. In addition, only 6% of HS families enrolled in
2010 gave birth to a second child. This compares to data showing that one
third of teen births are second births.
Sources of Funding as of July 2011
Healthy Start thanks its funders:
- United Way of King County
- United Way of Snohomish County
- Everett Clinic Foundation
- Northwest Children's Fund
- City of Bellevue
- City of Issaquah
- City of Kenmore
- City of Kirkland
- City of Redmond
- City of Renton
- City of Sammamish
- City of Shoreline
- One Family Foundation
- Cooper Levy Trust
- King County Veterans and Human Services Levy
- Washington Women’s Foundation
- Many generous individual donors